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SOCIAL LIFE IN PARIS. 



.m 



MADAME MOHL, 

From a Sketch by William W. Story. 



Note. — Mr. Story caught the likeness unk,unv,i to Madame Mohl o»e a/ter- 
710071 while she mas chatti7ig with his wife. 



MADAME MOHL 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS. 



a a>tutrp of foetal iLife in Pan's. 



BY 



KATHLEEN O'MEARA. 



% 



ft) 





BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
1886. 



^2^ . n j 



0?. 



/ 



Copyright, 1885, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



O' CGNGREfis 
I^JHINGTOWJ 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 
Retrospect of some French Salons. Mrs. Clarke. Mary's 

childhood and youth. Her first appearance at the 
Abbaye-au-Bois. Originality and esprit. Friend- 
ship with Madame Recamier and Chauteaubriand. 
The Rue du Bac. She resolves to form a Salon. 
Bohemian manners. Forty winks. Some interest- 
ing visitors 1 

CHATTER IT. 

Julius Mohl. Early days in Paris. Ampere. Fauriel. 
Journey to Italy. Manzoni's home. Letter from 
Mary to Julius Mohl. Their marriage. Pluto- 
cracy. Louis Philippe. The Empire. Crinoline. 
Conversation in England and in France. Madame 
Mohl's conversational powers. M. Ottmar von 
Mohl's reminiscences of his aunt 52 

CHAPTER III. 

'I can't abide stupid folk!' A German's estimate 
of Madame Mohl. Letters to Madame Scberer 
and Ampere. Memoir of Madame Recamier. 



vi CONTENTS. 

Page 
Unworldliness. Personal appearance. Rudeness to 

Madame Ristori. Concealment of her age. Grief 

at Mrs. Gaskell's death. Ball at the Hotel de Ville 140 

CHAPTER IV. 

Foreign element in Madame Mohl's Salon. The Stan- 
leys. The Deanery. Madame Mohl meets the 
Queen and Prince Leopold. Canvassing for the 
Academy. Kindness to animals. Guizot's anec- 
dote of the Duchess and her Coachman. Detesta- 
tion of Napoleon III. Montalembert. Dejeuner 
to the Queen of Holland. Mignet. Jules Simon. 
The Queen's ' visit of digestion.' Hospitality of 
the Mohls. Mr. Grant Duff's reminiscences of 
their dinner parties. Letter to Mrs. Bishop. 
Femme de coeur 193 

CHAPTEE V. 

Franco- German war. Cruel position of M. Mohl. 
Mi's. Ritchie's visit to him during the Commune. 
His failing health. Mrs. Wynne Finch tells 
Madame Mohl he is dying. His death. His 
books. Madame Mohl's grief. Visit to England. 
'Not delightful like Madame d'Abbadie.' Visit 
to Germany. Loneliness in the deserted Salon. 
Dr. Gueneau de Mussy. Loss of memory. Ex- 
tracts from the Journals of Mr. and Mrs. Edward 
Wheelwright. M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire. The 
last Friday evening. Estimate of Madame Mohl's 
Mfe and character 251 



MADAME MOHL: 

HEE SALON AND HEE FEIENDS. 



CHAPTER I. 

There are some words that have a charm 
about them which never fades, and an interest 
which never flags. To those who care for 
France, her literature, her history, the little 
word salon has an irresistible fascination. It 
conjures up everything that is clever, charm- 
ing, piquant J most characteristic of the women 
of France. The salon is essentially a French 
institution. No other nation ever produced 
it; no other society contains the elements for 
producing it. We say ^ a pleasant house ' 
when we speak of a social centre. In France 

1 



2 MADAME MOHL 

they say 'a pleasant salon.' The different 
terms both express and explain the different 
ideas they represent. A house is a home 
where material hospitality is exercised ; where 
friends are entertained with more substantial 
fare than the feast of reason and the flow of 
soul. A pleasant house is suggestive of snug, 
convivial dinners and sociable, unceremonious 
lunches, of bread broken at various hours 
between the owners of the house and their 
friends. Another nice distinction is that it 
implies a master, as w^ell as a mistress. A 
salon calls up a totally different order of 
ideas. It supposes a mistress, but by no 
means necessarily a master; and it suggests 
no more substantial fare than talk, flow of 
words, and liberal interchange of ideas. It is 
simply a centre where pleasant people are to 
be met and good conversation is to be had. 
It may have — indeed, it generally has — its 
particular tone and color ; it may be literary, 
religious, political, artistic, or philanthropic ; 
but it remains always a place for talking — 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 3 

a place where intellectual nectar replaces 
material beverages. 

When we consider how much pleasure, 
amusement, even downright happiness, is to 
be got out of talk, the wonder is that so little 
is done towards cultivating it. Formerly, the 
French understood this, and gave as much 
time and care to the cultivation of talk as to 
that of any other fine art. Their salons were 
schools where the art of conversation was 
taught, arenas where its adepts and pupils 
exercised themselves in the game. To say of 
a woman, ^ Elle cause bien,' was to pay her a 
far more delicate and flattering tribute than 
to praise her beauty, or even her dress. 
Paris is the birthplace and natural home of 
the salon. It is a growth indigenous to the 
soil of the lively city, and an empire which 
has been respected there ever since it was 
first founded by Madame de Eambouillet for 
the purification and perfecting of the French 
language. The throne has been left vacant 
at various periods, sometimes for long inter- 



4 MADAME MOHL 

vals; but there it has stood, ready for any 
pi^elendanie who could take possession of it. 
The right of conquest was the only right 
recognized, or necessary. There was no he- 
reditary law which transmitted the sceptre 
from one queen to another. There was no 
dynastic code to which she was compelled to 
conform once she had grasped it. Like 
Caesar, she had only to come, to see her 
empire, and to conquer it. Every woman 
who held in her own individuality the power 
to do this might, under the most elastic 
restrictions, aspire to a sovereignty at once 
elective, absolute, and democratic. 

These queens have sometimes been Avomen 
not born in the purjole of ' society,' or even 
promoted to it by marriage. It is character- 
istic of the supreme position conceded by the 
French to mere personal charm and esprit in 
women that even in the eighteenth century, 
in those relativelv feudal aa-es before the 
Revolution had levelled the barriers between 
classes, a woman endowed with these qualities 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS . 5 

might, without being well or even decently 
born, throw down the high barricades of 
social prejudices, and reign triumphantly as 
queen of a salon. 

There was Madame Geoffrin, for instance. 
Madame Geoffrin may be considered one of 
the earliest and most remarkable successors 
of Madame de Eambouillet, whose blood was 
so '- darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.' Madame 
Geoffrin was a boiirgeoise by birth and by 
marriage ; she had no roots in society, — no 
links, even, with it, except those that she 
afterwards forged herself ; yet after a long 
interregnum the sceptre of the beautiful mar- 
quise passed to her, and she wielded it with 
a grace and power that have never since 
been surpassed, if indeed they have ever been 
equalled. Madame de Rambouillet, with her 
beauty and rank, had remained the head of 
a coterie, — a fastidious and exclusive coterie ; 
while Madame Geoffrin, by mere force of 
personal charm, tact, wit — or rather esprit, 
for the terms are by no means synonymous — 



6 MADAME MOHL 

formed a salon to which not only men of 
letters, but all the aristocratic women of the 
day, in their powder and hoops, crowded 
eagerly. So supreme was the position at- 
tained by the manufacturer's wife, that no 
distinguished person from any part of Europe 
visited Paris without seeking to be presented 
to her. Even royalty paid its court to her, 
and was flattered by her civility. Gustavus 
of Poland, one of the habitues of her salon, on 
coming to the throne, wrote to the old lady, 
— a very old lady then, — ' Your son has be- 
come a king : you must come and see him in 
his kingdom.' And she did go, entertained 
by the Emperor at Vienna, and by all the 
great folks on the way from "Warsaw to Paris, 
as if she had been a sovereign going to visit 
another sovereign. 

Yet this venerable old lady had done noth- 
ing in any department of human enterprise 
to entitle her to this world-wide homage. 
She had, it is true, given dinners that were 
admitted to be excellent, and in later days 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 7 

she had been a kind of mother to the En- 
cyclopaedists, with whose advanced doctrines 
she sympathized; her salon had become a 
sort of tribune, where these doctrines were 
expounded, and the applause they awoke 
there was echoed beyond its tapestried walls 
to the city outside, and to the nations beyond 
that again. But this alone could not have 
secured to Madame GeofFrin wide social influ- 
ence, though it would have entitled her to a 
high place among the Blue Stockings of the 
period. The secret of her influence lay in the 
combination of personal charm with perfect 
mastery in the art of talking and receiving. 

Another curious example of the ascen- 
dency of esprit m France is the salon of 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Poor, plain, no- 
bly but not honorably born, tolerated in the 
chateau of a sister who was ashamed to own 
her. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse attracted 
the notice of Madame du Deffand, who in- 
stantly detected a kindred spirit in the neg- 
lected Cinderella, and offered her a home. 



8 MADAME MOHL 

It must heave been like an episode in a fairy- 
tale to the young country-girl when her 
sister's guest said, ' Come and live with me ! ' 
To live with Madame du DefFand meant to 
live with all that was distinguished in Euro- 
pean society. What a dream for a young 
girl, with a passionate soul, and a bright, am- 
bitious mind, to be transported suddenly from 
a dull provincial home to this intellectual 
Eldorado ! The dream lasted ten years, and 
then they quarrelled violently, and parted. 

The cause of the quarrel was characteris- 
tic both of the ao-e and of its women. Visi- 
tors, in those days, came from five to eight. 
Madame du DefFand, now blind and infirm, 
rose late, and never appeared in the drawing- 
room till six. Meantime, Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse had been receiving all the clever 
peojDle since five, skimming the cream of the 
talk, and lapping it up all to herself. She 
went on committing this systematic theft for 
a whole year before Madame du DefFand found 
it out ! No wonder the old lady boiled over 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 9 

with rage, and ordered the unprincipled thief 
ont of her house. If it had been money, or 
jewels, or any such trash, that she had pil- 
fered, some extenuating circumstances might 
have been found, and the culprit recom- 
mended to mercy ; but to steal the cream of 
the talk, to gobble up the hotm mots and the 
epigrams and the anecdotes, fresh and crisp, 
— what mercy could be found for such wick- 
edness as this ! 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was turned out 
of the house. Her accomplices, however, 
stood manfully by her. D'Alembert, a host 
in himself, was already her devoted admirer, 
and now became her stoutest champion, lead- 
ing the force of the Encyclopaedists with him. 
They deserted Madame du Deffand, noble, 
rich, and splendidly lodged, and followed 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to a small apart- 
ment, which they insisted on jointly furnish- 
ing for her, and where, thanks to a small 
annuity from her mother (as recently discov- 
ered documents have established), she was 



10 MADAME MOHL 

able to live, and form a salon whicli soon 
rivalled that of her late protectress and now 
her deadly enemy. It was a strange sight, 

— this woman, with scarcely a single social 
advantage, without even a pretty face (she 
was ngly), coolly snatching the sceptre from 
the hands of a legitimate sovereign, usurping 
a portion of her empire, and ruling it with as 
high a hand as any autocrat to the manner 
born. So omnipotent, at this period, was the 
ascendency of the /(?m?;ze J'^sjonV, and so essen- 
tial the salon of such a one to the thinking 
men of the day. 

None of these three women published any- 
thing on any subject. They wrote letters, 

— burning love-letters, and brilliant gossip- 
ing letters; but they did no work, literary, 
scientific, or philanthropic. They simply 
had salons ; they talked and received beauti- 
fully, and by doing this they achieved im- 
mortality. It is true, a salon in those days 
was no sinecure ; it was an important role, 
and the woman who undertook it gave her 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 11 

whole mind to succeeding in it, as a painter 
or musician strives to achieve excellence in 
his art, Sainte-Beuve says of Madame Geof- 
frin that no Roman cardinal could have ex- 
ercised '^more diplomacy, more delicate and 
gentle cleverness,' in the management of the 
most difficult affairs, than did this remarkable 
lady during the thirty years that her salon 
was the centre of intellectual interest and 
social enjoyment. 

No woman creates such a centre, or ex- 
ercises this kind of personal sway, unless 
she possesses certain requisite qualifications. 
Envy or ignorance may attribute her popu- 
larity to luck, to a series of happy circum- 
stances, to the blind tendency of the crowd 
to follow the crowd ; but this does not suffice 
to account for it. There is always a primary 
intrinsic reason which explains this attraction. 
Some periods have been especially favora- 
ble to the development of these personal in- 
fluences. The latter part of the eighteenth 
century was pre-eminently so. It saw the 



12 MADAME MOHL 

apotheosis of the salon. Its salons were 
laboratories where the Revolation was being 
prepared. Here new ideas were discussed, 
new doctrines enunciated, new theories put 
into form, and in a certain measure into prac- 
tice ; in fact, all the elements that were soon 
to culminate in the explosion that shook 
France to her centre were here analyzed and 
experimentalized with in dilettante fashion. 
The members never dreamed that they were 
manufacturing the dynamite that was to blow 
up themselves and society; they did not 
foresee what all this playing with fire was 
to lead to; but, though unconsciously, they 
were none the less certainly getting ready 
the Revolution. When it came, they and 
their laboratories vanished. The social throne 
fell with the national one, swallowed up in 
that terrific convulsion. The very foundations 
on which every throne had rested seemed 
shattered beyond the possibility of ever re- 
building them ; and yet as soon as the throes 
subsided, and despotism had crushed anarchy 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 13 

and restored order, society began to cast 
about for queens to come and rule over it. 
It had tired of conquests, as it had tired of 
revolution; it had had enough of slaughter, 
of the rumbling of the iomhereau bearing 
* batches ' to the guillotine, and of the roll 
of drums announcins^ ^famous victories.' It 
wanted to be soothed and amused, just as an 
audience longs for a good farce after it has 
been harrowed and excited by some tremen- 
dous tragedy. The salon could never again 
be what it had been before the close of the 
century; the same rakon (Telre for it no 
longer existed. Those who had opinions to 
proclaim, or views to expound, now found 
ready opportunities in public life. They did 
not look about for a salon to get a hearing ; 
there was one to be had every day in the 
press, in parliament, in public life generally. 
But if its old role was played out, there was 
already a new one prepared for it. Politics 
and war were at a discount ; society was sick 
of them, so it turned to art. Artists came 



14 MADAME MOHL 

and took the vacant thrones, and society 
went to court and did homage to them. 
With the exception of some few pohtical 
ones, whose tone was strictly defined, the 
most brilliant salons of the Restoration were 
chiefly artistic. The beautiful Madame Le- 
brun, who had narrowly escaped paying with 
her head for the honor of painting the por- 
trait of Marie Antoinette, had come back. 
She had queened it in all the capitals of 
Europe during her exile, and now reigned 
in Paris. All the rear-guard of the Encyclo- 
paedists, all the great ladies and the grands 
seigneurs crowded round her, and for thirty 
years met every Saturday evening in her 
salon, saying, 'Do you remember?' — talk- 
ing over old times and the gay court where 
she had been the honored guest of their king 
and queen. The little courtly court was 
broken up in 1830; but the salon lived on 
till 1842, when Madame Lebrun died, at the 
age of ninety, charming, and even beautiful, 
to the last. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 16 

Mademoiselle Contat's salon was another 
illustration of the change that society had 
undergone. The beautiful actress, with her 
stream of song, drew all the world to her 
salon, where, besides herself, people heard 
such song-birds as Malibran and Sontag, and 
the music of Rossini and Donizetti before it 
was given to the world outside. Society was 
intoxicated with music, and frantic about art ; 
a not unnatural reaction towards melody and 
beauty after the hideous din of revolution 
and war. But it was, at the same time, 
something more than this. Art was not only 
a fashion ; it was a harbor of refuge, towards 
which many were making in the event of a 
storm overtaking them again. The noblesse 
had been impoverished, in innumerable cases 
beggared, by the Ee volution ; and many of 
these sufferers, who had learned at home in 
the atrocities of '93, or abroad in the miseries 
of emigration, the need of possessing an in- 
heritance which no political catastrophe could 
take from them, determined to secure some 



16 MADAME MOHL 

such provision for their children. Thus, the 
daughters of the Faubourg St. Germain were 
frequently to be met in the studios of the 
great painters and sculptors, working with the 
steadiness of professional students. Others 
studied music with the same ardor. The 
result was a generation which counted num- 
bers of highly accomplished women, whose 
comjDetition raised artists in the social scale. 
Society, after being ruthlessly invaded by de- 
mocracy, was now making a generous peace 
with it, and voluntarilj^ opening its ranks to 
the principle of equality which the Revolu- 
tion had vainly tried to force upon it. The 
reign of the old noblesse, as a political power, 
was now virtually at an end. A whole era 
had come and gone since Napoleon had 
asked, after the battle of Austerlitz, ^What 
does the Faubourg St. Germain think ? ' It 
mattered little now to the head of the State 
what that once powerful section thought! 
Except as a clan, a distinction, a fine his- 
toric legend, it had practically passed away. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 17 

Those who had profited by its decay, and 
supplanted it, were, nevertheless, uneasy. 
They could not rest with full content in their 
new possessions, in the titles and domains 
conferred on them hy the Empire ; they lived 
in daily terror of being dispossessed by a 
decree of parliament, or some political en- 
actment. The Charte eventually reassured 
them, and proved that the monarchy had 
both the will and the power to maintain the 
concessions and grants of the Empire. But 
though the King might sanction irregular 
coats-of-arms and dubious territorial titles, he 
could not confer on their holders the distinc- 
tion born of inherited instincts and long ances- 
tral traditions, nor the chivalrous sentiments 
and courteous manners that are a part of these 
things ; neither could he legislate against vul- 
garity and bad grammar, nor prevent society 
from laughing when the ladies of these new 
lords proclaimed their triumph and its ori- 
gin by declaring, like their successors of '48, 
' C'est nous qui sont les vraies princesses ! ' 

2 



18 MADAME MOHL 

But society had to look the fact in the 
face that its old structure was hopelessly 
destroyed, and that it had now to build itself 
up out of new materials. It was a grand 
opportunity for science, art, and intellect to 
take the lead, and to a certain extent they 
availed themselves of it. The Canape Doctri- 
naire on which the King sat, surrounded by 
Cuvier, Guizot, Villemain, Arnaud, De Jouy, 
Koyer-Collard, etc., may have been hard and 
stiff enough to justify the remark of a wit who 
was never offered a seat on it : ^ One may go 
to sleep on the canape, but one is certain to 
have only bad dreams there.' All the same 
the canape was a power in its way. It left its 
mark on the times. It made talent the fashion, 
and created a brilliant intellectual society ; it 
lifted men of science to the highest places 
in the synagogue, and while it lasted the 
reign of plutocracy was kept at bay. Never, 
perhaps, did that reign seem farther off 
than under the Restoration, when it was Men 
ports to be poor, and when every gentleman 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 19 

was proud to boast of being "^ ruined by the 
Revolution.' 

There is a tide in the affairs of woman, 
which, taken at the flood, floats her up to 
social eminence and power. These tides occur 
oftenest at the close of those political con- 
vulsions that recur periodically in France. 
When society is recovering from the pangs of 
a revolution, or the shock of a coup d^etat, then 
comes the opportunity of a clever woman; 
while the waters are still heaving after the 
storm, then is the moment for her to launch 
her boat, and rise with it on the mounting 
wave. 

A great deal of Madame R^camier's un- 
rivalled social success was undoubtedly due to 
the chance which placed one of these oppor- 
tunities at her disposal, and to her rare tact 
in taking advantage of it. When Paris had 
got rid of the guillotine and washed itself 
clean of blood, and had begun to breathe and 
to thirst for pleasure after tasting pain in its 
most hideous and terrifying forms, Napoleon 



20 MADAME MOHL 

arrived, a hero and a demigod, to rejoice the 
cowed and suffering people, and Madame 
Recamier rose hke a vision of grace and 
sweetness to gladden and enchant them. To 
see this lovely woman dance the shawl dance 
with the voluptuous grace of a Greek beauty 
intoxicated them like new wine. Wherever 
she went, the crowd rushed and pushed to 
see her. Even in church they stood up on 
chairs to get a glimpse of her. The hero who 
was being feted and worshipped by the whole 
nation came to pay his court to this reigning 
beauty, and the beauty snubbed him. This 
snub increased considerably the splendor of 
her position ; but she paid dearly for it. 
Napoleon never forgave it. When he was 
master of Europe, Madame R^camier's rebuff 
rankled in his wounded vanity, and he pursued 
her with a malignant spite which is in itself 
a striking testimony to the influence of women 
in France. Madame Recamier had nothing to 
do with parties or politics ; she never meddled 
with them, and she never wrote a line ; but 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 21 

she was beautiful and fascinating, and she had 
a salon, and so Csesar in all his glory reckoned 
with her. He had tried to win her, but had 
failed, and he treated her ever after with the 
bitterest rancor. He turned her out of Paris, 
and then out of France. His pitiless hate 
hunted her farther still, to the countries where 
she took refuge, so that it was no small act 
of courage for other sovereigns to befriend, 
or even tolerate, her in their dominions ; any 
act of kindness to the disgraced exile being 
liable to be visited on the offender by some 
swift and formidable vengeance. All this 
petty persecution of the great Emperor 
mightily increased Madame Recamier's impor- 
tance ; and when, after his fall, the lovely, 
unoffending victim came back to Paris, she 
was received like an exiled queen returning 
with a little martyr's crown set on her beauti- 
ful head. 

The Restoration offered her a new oppor- 
tunity. After the gorgeous vulgarities of the 
Empire, simplicity and good manners again 



22 MADAME MOHL 

came into fashion. Madame Recamier inau- 
gurated a new reign, totally different from 
her former one. Time, suffering, and soli- 
tude had matured her mind, and softened, 
rather than dimmed, the radiance of her 
beauty. The loss of her fortune, mainly due 
to that snub that cost her so dear in every 
way, made it impossible for her to resume 
her old manner of life, with its splendid hos- 
pitalities and receptions ; so she retired to the 
Abbaye-aux-Bois, and settled herself down 
there in an almost conventual simplicity. Her 
salon, in the true sense of the word, dates 
from this period. It was no longer her 
wealth and beauty that drew the world 
around her; it was her esprit^ her sympa- 
thetic charm and personal influence. All 
that was distinguished in society now came 
to Madame Recamier in her small drawing- 
room, with its tiled floor and plain furniture, 
and felt proud of being admitted to her cir- 
cle. Men of all parties and shades of opinion 
laid aside their animosities in that sweet pres- 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 23 

ence, and smiled on one another for her sake. 
In the dim religious light of her drawing- 
room there was something of the atmosphere 
of a sick-room. People spoke in subdued 
voices, as if they were considering the nerves 
of an invalid, — as in fact they were. Cha- 
teaubriand was the sick god who sat en- 
throned there, tended by the loving hands of 
the suave beauty, whose mission for the fu- 
ture was to soothe and amuse him. The 
business of her life, henceforth, was to desen- 
nuyer the selfish, petulant, hlase man of 
genius. He had been fighting against emmi 
all his life; and now that the weariness of 
age clogged his sated and still insatiable van- 
ity, he gave up the battle, and expected 
others to carry it on for him. Any one who 
could assist Madame Recamier in this irk- 
some warfare conferred on her the highest 
obligation. Her devotion to Chateaubriand 
was entire. Her whole day was given up to 
him. He wrote to her in the morning, 
and she wrote back an answer. In the 



24 MADAME MOHL 

afternoon, he came and talked an hour 
with her alone, before any other visi- 
tors were admitted. For many years he 
also spent several hours with her in the 
evening. 

The salon of the Abbaye was, in fact, a 
little surviving specimen of that period of the 
seventeenth century when, as Madame Mohl 
says, the social relations were the most im- 
portant business of life, when ' being agree- 
able or disagreeable to others in mind and 
person was " to be or not to be ; " when all 
the shades of friendship, from the deep Pla- 
tonic affection to the slight impression one 
person made on another at first meeting, 
were the real preoccupations of existence ; 
when all outward conditions were subordinate 
to the pleasure given by the communion of 
one human being with another, . . . getting 
rich, building castles,- making discoveries, 
founding a family. These objects might be 
followed by a few, but sociability was the 
universal passion.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 25 

What most strikes us, busy people of the 
nineteenth century, in this kind of inter- 
course, is the leisure, not to say pure, un- 
adulterated idleness, that it suggests, as well 
as the inexhaustible capacity for talk. What 
could these clever folk, who had no ^vor]^ in 
common, have had to say to one another and 
Madame Eecamier every day and all day 
long ? Lovers are the only clar^s of persons 
who are supposed to have always something 
new and important to say to each other, 
which, the oftener they say it, the newer and 
more important it is ; though even these 
happy maniacs, after a more or less length- 
ened phase of madness, come to their right 
minds, and having said their say, possess 
their tongues in peace ; but these habitues of 
Madame Recamier's salon seem never to 
have reached that point. Long after her 
ardent adorers had calmed down into de- 
voted friends, they still came and talked, day 
after day, for hours. It is clear that they 
could have had nothing else to do, and that 



26 MADAME MOHL 

Madame Recamier had nothing else to do but 
sit at home and receive them and listen to 
them. 

This power of sitting at home was more 
common then than it is at the present day. 
The incapacity for sitting at home is, no 
doubt, one cause, among others, w^hy there 
are no salons now. Madame Benoiton could 
no more have a salon than a sieve could carry 
water ; but fifty years ago Madame Benoiton 
was not such a universal type as she has since 
become. Frivolous the women of that period 
may have been — '^ uncultured,' too, in the 
modern sense of the word ; but whatever their 
shortcomings, they had one virtue which the 
women of to-day lack — they stayed at home. 
The habitues who, day after day, rang at their 
door did not fear to be met with the inevitable 
formula, ' Madame est sortie ! ' 

Madame Recamier not only selected her 
company, but took pains to direct their con- 
versation with a view to amusing M. de 
Chateaubriand ; and yet, in spite of that per- 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 27 

feet art, which M. de Tocqueville says ^ elle -^y 
portait jusqu'a rinfini,' her efforts sometimes 
failed to lift the cloud from the brow of the 
tired god. No one, therefore, could do her a 
greater service than to coax the wearied poet 
to smile, while to rouse his fastidious languor 
to the vulgar relief of a laugh was to call out 
her deepest gratitude. This feat was one day 
performed with signal success by an English 
girl, Mary Clarke, afterwards Madame Mohl, 
whose position as a favorite with the hostess 
and a welcome recruit to her brilliant circle 
was forthwith definitively established. After 
her first triumph at the Abbaye, Miss Mary 
Clarke's arrival was looked for by all with 
more or less eagerness, according to the de- 
gree of ennui visible in M. de Chateaubriand. 
When he came to the dangerous point of 
stroking Madame Recamier's cat, eyes were 
turned anxiously to the door ; but when he 
reached the psychological crisis of playing 
with the bell-rope, impatience increased to 
nervousness, and the entrance of la jeune 



28 MADAME MOHL 

Anglaise was greeted with a general gasp of 
satisfaction. 

Mrs. Clarke, the mother of this young lady, 
was of Scotch family. She was the daughter 
of a Captain Hay, of the Royal Navy ; her 
mother, Mrs. Hay, had been a woman of 
strong character and cultivated mind, and 
had associated with that intellectual circle of 
which Hume was long, the centre in Edin- 
burgh. Mrs. Clarke was left a widow when 
very young, and came to France with her two 
little girls — Eleanor, aged ten, and Mary, 
aged three — in the memorable year '93.* She 
was in delicate health, and resided for many 
years in the South — a circumstance which 
led to Mary's being sent to a convent school 
in Toulouse. She got on very well with the 
nuns, apparently, and always retained the 
kindest recollection of them. Until she was 

1 This seemingly improbable date is fixed by Mary, who in 
a letter to M. Ampere, given later on, says that she came to 
France when she was three years old. The year of her birth 
was 1790. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 29 

three years old she never spoke. Her mother 
grew uneasy, and, although Mary's hearing 
was perfect, she began to fear that, owing 
to some local defect, the child was dumb. 
Suddenly, one day, the little creature held 
out her hand to Mrs. Clarke, and said very 
distinctly, ^ Give me some money to buy a 
cake ! ' Mary, when an old woman, used to 
tell this story of herself with a keen relish 
of the irony of it. She never heard any 
explanation given of the prolonged delay in 
the use of her tongue, but would remark 
humorously, ' I have made up for it since ! ' 

She used also to relate that, when a * very 
little girl,' she had been perched on the back 
of a trooper's horse to see the Allies enter 
Paris. It was rather like her to have occu- 
pied this unconventional position, and as she 
said she remembered it, it was undoubtedly 
true ; but the assertion that she was ' a very 
little girl ' at the time is open to doubt, see- 
ing that she was born in 1790, and conse- 
quently was a very mature little girl in 



30 MADAME MOHL 

1815. This point of her age was the sin- 
gle one on which her veracity was not to be 
trusted. 

She was a singularly lively child, and grew 
up to girlhood with a sort of mercurial ac- 
tivity of mind and body that kept every one 
about her in perpetual motion. She had great 
taste for music, and still more for drawing ; 
and both these gifts were carefully cultivated. 
She had a remarkable facility for taking por- 
traits ; she took one of herself, which was said 
to be an admirable likeness in her young 
days ; indeed, the likeness remained distinctly 
visible after the lapse of nearly three quarters 
of a century. She studied pastels, which were 
then the rage, with Mademoiselle Clothilde 
Gerard, and copied very assiduously at the 
Louvre. She used to go there in the morn- 
ing, and work away without intermission till 
the gallery closed. She went a good deal 
into society at the same time ; and in order 
to avoid having to go home to dress, she in- 
vented an apron, as more convenient than 




MADAME MOHL, 

From the Original by Herself. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 31 

a basket, with two large pockets, in one of 
which she carried her lunch, and in the other 
a wreath of flowers. When the gallery was 
cleared out, she would start off to a dinner- 
party — in those days people kept early 
hours — and perform her toilet in the ante- 
room. Sometimes it was a hall, with fine flun- 
kies in attendance ; but their presence made 
not the slightest difference to Mary Clarke. 
She tangled out her locks, and planted her 
wreath on the top of them, rolled up her 
apron, and made her entry. We can readily 
believe those' who declare that it was always 
a triumphal one. A few still remember the 
effect la jeune Anglaise produced in the draw- 
ing-room of the Princess Belgiojoso, where 
she was a constant guest, and where this 
wonderful head-gear was always greeted with 
delight. 

Edgar Quinet, a quondam admirer and 
friend of Mary's, has left us a graphic sketch 
of her as she appeared one evening at the 
Princess's, amid some six hundred represen- 



32 MADAME MOHL 

tatives of the beauty, rank, and fashion of 
the day. Writing to his mother after this 
briUiant soiree, Quinet says : — 

* As to ma chere miss, as you call her, I 
am compelled to own that she made a sorry 
figure, although greatly liked and considered 
by serious people. I firmly believe that she 
had on a brown silk dress, with her hair 
frizzed and tangled as usual. She is, luckily, 
quite unconscious of her appearance ; she 
glides about, she runs, she stands, she exhib- 
its herself amid the lovely faces that the 
saloons are full of, with a serene self-satis- 
faction and an imperturbable assurance that 
could not be surpassed if she had the head 
of Yenus herself. As for me, I hardly dared 
look at her. But, bless her! she never notices 
anything.' 

In another letter to his mother he says: 
^ Miss Clarke is assuredly a kind and sincere 
friend ; but what an oddity ! She would fit 
in wonderfully in one of Hoffmann's fantastic 
tales. Just at this moment she is madly in 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 33 

love with a frightful little black cat that she 
kisses on the mouth all the morning in the 
drawing-room, exclaiming every time, " Ador- 
able creature that you are ! " ' 

Eleanor Clarke, Mary's elder sister, married 
in 1808 Mr. Frewen Turner, of Cold Over- 
ton, Leicestershire. Mary used to pay her vis- 
its frequently. During one of these visits she 
had an adventure that she often related with 
great satisfaction. Madame de Stael was in 
London, and Mary, who had heard a great 
deal of the celebrated authoress, grew en- 
thusiastic about her, and was dying with 
curiosity to see her. It came to her knowl- 
edge that Madame de Stael was looking for a 
governess for some friend or relative ; so she 
determined to go and offer herself for the 
situation. She found out Madame de Stael's 
address, stole out one morning, unknown to 
the household, invested her whole stock of 
ready money in a ^ coach,' and drove off to 
the hotel. Madame de Stael received her 
very graciously, but declined her services on 



34 MADAME MOHL 

tlie ground that she looked too young. Mary 
was very proud of this exploit, which she 
kept a profound secret for a long time. 

Mrs. Clarke, on coming first to Paris, took 
up her residence in the Rue Bonaparte. She 
had been there many years, when she had a 
quarrel with her landlord — ' They were al- 
ways a pestilent set, the Paris landlords,' was 
Mary's comment, half a century later — and 
Mrs. Clarke determined to leave. It hap- 
pened just at this time that Madame Reca- 
mier was anxious to get rid of her large 
apartment at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and take 
a smaller and quieter one looking on the 
garden. M. Fauriel and J. J. Ampere, who 
were intimate friends of the Clarkes, had fre- 
quently spoken of them to Madame Recamier, 
and now suggested that her rooms might suit 
them. Mrs. Clarke and her daughter came 
to see the rooms, and were introduced to 
Madame Recamier. They at once agreed to 
take the apartment. The drawing-room in 
Madame Recaraier's new suite was too small 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 36 

for her numerous visitors, and it was agreed 
that she sliould have the use of her old one, 
now Mrs. Clarke's, for her evening receptions. 
This arrangement quickly drew the ladies 
into an intimacy which soon warmed into 
friendship — a friendship that was never 
clouded. 

Mary conquered Madame Recamier's good 
graces from the very first, by her power of 
amusing M. de Chateaubriand ; but a genuine 
personal liking soon followed on this imper- 
sonal sense of gratitude. The young English 
girl became enthusiastically attached to her 
beautiful friend ; for, though past fifty at 
the time, Madame Recamier was still quite 
beautiful enough to fulfil the expectations 
raised by her extraordinary fame, while her 
grace and charm were as fascinating as ever. 

^ She was the most entertaining person I 
ever knew,' was Mary's testimony to a friend 
fifty years afterwards. ^ I never knew any- 
body who could tell a story as she did — des 
histoires de societe ; she had a great sense of 



36 MADAME MOHL 

humor, and her own humor was exceedingly 
delicate, but she never said an unkind thing 
of any one. I loved Madame Recamier.^ 

Mary Clarke evidently looked much 
younger than she was, for every one called 
her la jeime Anglaise, and spoke of her as 
quite a young girl. She must have been 
thirty at this time ; but there is wisdom as 
well as wit in the French proverb, ' A woman 
is .the age she looks,' and it is clear that 
Mary had in her face and manner what con- 
stitutes the essential character of youth — 
its freshness and its charm. Her childlike 
naturalness, her mercurial gayety, and her 
-sparkling wit must have been in Madame 
Recamier's circle like fresh air let into an 
overheated, heavily scented room. Her auda- 
cious fun, combined with an originality 
amounting, even at this early date, to eccen- 
tricity, must have been a most refreshing ele- 
ment in a milieu where high-strung sentiment 
was liable now and then to that inevitable 
recoil which follows overstrain in any direc- 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 37 

tion. Mary's presence was death to ennui. 
One could not be dull where she was; she 
might displease or exasperate, — she very 
often did both, — but she was incapable of 
boring any one. Many of the distinguished 
men who frequented Madame Recaraier's 
salon were already friends of the Clarkes, 
more especially, as has been shown, Fauriel 
and Ampere. Describing these pleasant days 
at the Abbaye, Ampere says of Mary Clarke, 
*She is a charming combination of French 
sprightliness and English originality ; but I 
think the French element predominates. She 
was the delight of the grand ennuye ; her ex- 
pressions were entirely her own, and he more 
than once made use of them in his writings. 
Her French was as original as the turn of 
her mind, exquisite in quality, but savoring 
more of the last century than of our own 
time.' 

The personal appearance of la jeune 
Anglaise completed with singular fitness the 
effect of her bright, bold, and humorous talk. 



38 MADAME MOHL 

Without being positively pretty, she produced 
the effect of being so ; she had a pink-and- 
white complexion ; a small turned-up nose, 
full of spirit and impudence ; round, big, ex- 
ceedingly bright and saucy blue eyes ; a small 
head, well set on her shoulders, crowned with 
short curls that, even in those young days, 
had a trick of getting tangled into a fuzz on 
her white forehead, escaping very early in the 
morning from the bondage of combs and pins. 
Her figure was slight, and full of a spirited 
grace peculiar to itself. Some persons spoke 
of her as very pretty ; others denied her all 
claim to the compliment. But whatever dif- 
ference of o^Dinion may have existed as to 
her beauty, there was none as to her charm. 
Even those who disliked her — and such a mi- 
nority always existed — agreed that she was 
fascinating. A good deal of this fascination 
lay in her entire naturalness ; she said any- 
thing that came into her head, and just as 
bluntly to a prince or a poet as to a school- 
boy or an apple-woman. If that saucy head 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 39 

had been examined by a phrenologist, it would 
assuredly have been found wholly wanting in 
the organ of veneration. It bowed down to 
nothing but intellectual greatness. Chateau- 
briand was to her the highest living repre- 
sentative of this sovereignty, and to him she 
yielded ungrudging homage. He accepted it 
most graciously, and seems to have been 
really fond of the bright young English 
girl. 

M. Lenormant, who was a good reader, 
read the ' Memoires d'Outre-Tombe' aloud once 
a week at the Abbaye from four till six, when 
dinner interrupted the reading, which was re- 
sumed again from eight till eleven. No one 
was admitted but those who were certain to 
admire and applaud up to the desired point. 
No one fulfilled these conditions more satisfac- 
torily than Mary Clarke, who was sometimes 
so moved by the glowing, high-flown narrative 
that the tears would steal down her cheeks 
— a tribute which undoubtedly helped to warm 
the author's heart towards her. 



40 MADAME MOHL 

Mrs. Clarke's residence at the Abbaye was 
altogether delightful. Everything that was in- 
teresting in literature was known and enjoyed 
there before it was given to the world outside. 
Young authors took their manuscripts there 
for judgment, as to a power behind the throne ; 
celebrities, already known to the world, were 
glad to taste the fame of a new work in the 
delicate praise of that fastidious audience. 
\ When Rachel was about to appear in a new 
role^ she would test her success by declaiming 
it in Madame Recamier's salon before chal- 
lenging public judgment on the stage. 

All these influences contributed in their 
degree to form Mary's taste and cultivate her 
intelligence. During this time she also con- 
tracted a friendship, which absorbed her very 
much while it lasted, and left its impress on 

her mind and character. Louise S was 

several years younger than Mary Clarke, and 
in every respect as difi;erent from her as one 
clever girl can be from another. She was so 
extraordinarily beautiful that one who knew 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 41 

her in that fresh blossoming time describes 
his first sight of her as ^ seeing a vision.' To 
this personal loveliness she added an inde- 
scribable charm of modesty and womanly 
grace, a mind of masculine solidity, and a 
highly poetic imagination. Mary Clarke, be- 
witched by this combination of endowments, 
became passionately attached to their pos- 
sessor, who returned her affection with equal 
sincerity, but without the jealous warmth 
that was peculiar to Mary's feelings. Louise 

S 's influence was in all ways beneficial ; 

her calm judgment and strong sense steadied, 
and in a measure directed, the wayward and 
excitable character of her friend. The friend- 
ship prospered admirably untir there appeared 
on the scene another young lady, Adelaide de 
Montgolfier, a young French girl, who was de- 
formed, but whom nature had endowed with 
every other grace and charm to make up for 
this one unkindness. She and Louise formed 
a friendship which Mary Clarke shared at 
first, and then grew jealous of, declaring finally 



42 MADAME MOHL 

that her friend must choose between her and 
Adelaide. Louise was much too strong a char- 
acter to bend to this tyranny, and the result 
was a violent quarrel and estrangement. In 
course of time Louise marriedj and became 
known to the world of letters by some delicate 
and charming works for the young, which bore 
the stamp of her own artistic grace and refined 
purity of taste. Her life drifted away from 
that of her more worldly and ambitious friend. 
They retained, however, a deep-rooted regard 
for each other, and when both were old women 

Mary sought out Madame ^ and proved, as 

we shall see, that time and separation had left 
the old affection unchanged. This fidelity to 
her friends was one of the salient and admir- 
able points in her character. 

After a stay of seven years at the Abbaye, 
the Clarkes removed to the apartment 120 
Eue du Bac, which both mother and daugh- 
ter were destined to occupy for the rest of 
their lives. They made a striking contrast, 
these two. Mrs. Clarke was handsome, dig- 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 43 

nified, quiet, by no means wanting in intelli- 
gence, but entirely eclipsed by her brilliant 
daughter. Not that Mary intentionally as- 
sumed any superiority over her mother ; it 
fell to her lot naturally. They were tenderly 
attached to each other. Mary was devoted 
to her mother, and used to say of her, in 
after years, that she had the sweetest tem- 
per she had ever known, and that she had 
never said a harsh word, or caused her to 
shed a tear in her childhood. 

Mary's taste for society had developed 
considerably daring her long and close com- 
panionship with Madame Recamier. Society 
had, in fact, now become her one absorb- 
ing interest, her vocation; she adopted it 
as one adopts art, politics, philanthropy, or 
any other calling. She determined to have 
a salon, and henceforth this salon became 
the business of her life. 

If the question here suggests itself, '^ Was 
this a worthy business to devote a life to ? ' 
we must beg those who ask the question to 



44 MADAME MOHL 

answer it accordmg to their respective lights. 
However, before dismissing Mary Clarke's 
pursuit as utterly vain and foolish, we may 
charitably remember that in her time the salon 
was a sort of benevolent institution, a refuge 
for homeless literary men, who, as a rule, are 
bachelors, and generally poor, especially the 
noblest of them — those who devote them- 
selves to the service of science and humanity. 
These studious men, after a long day's brain- 
work, have no bright hearth to turn to for 
relaxation and companionship. Clubs, so nu- 
merous now, and so seductive to the major- 
ity, do not attract this class of cultivated, 
thoughtful men, addicted to high thinking 
and plain living ; but sixty years ago they 
had not even the option of this resource. 
Clubs, which are accused of being one of 
the chief causes of the ruin of salon life, 
help, in a degree, to explain and justify the 
importance attached to it at this period. 

There can be no doubt that Mary Clarke 
took her role as mistress of a salon very much 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 45 

aiiserieux. In later years, when she had be- 
come the wife of one of these thinking^ men, 
she wrote a book which was virtually an 
apologia of the institution and of the influ- 
ence exercised through it by women in 
France. Contrasting the blighting contempt 
and isolation that accompanied the poverty 
of literary men in England with the position 
of the same class in France, she says : — ' To 
what did the French literary man owe his 
exemption from these miseries? To whom 
should he give thanks that the rich, the igno- 
rant, and the vulgar made no insolent jokes 
upon poor authors living in garrets, " Grub- 
Street scribblers," etc.? To the women who 
from the earliest days of literature gave them 
all the succor they could, bringing them into 
contact with the rich and the great, showing 
them off with every kind of ingenuity and 
tact. . . . Where, except in France, do we 
find it a general rule and custom for women 
of all ranks to make common cause with the 
whole talent and genius of the nation? If 



46 MADAME MOHL 

we examine into the private history of all 
their celebrated men, we find scarcely one 
to whom some woman has not been a min- 
istering spirit. . . . They helped them with 
their wit, . . . with their hearts ; they hstened 
to their sorrows, admired their genius before 
the world had become aware of it, advised 
them, entered patiently into all their feel- 
ings, and soothed their wounded vanities. . . . 
Are the life and happiness of the poet, the 
man of genius, a trifle? . . . Let all who hold 
a pen think of the kind hearts who by the ex- 
citement of social intercourse and sympathy 
have preserved a whole class from falling into 
degradation and vice.' 

Miss. Clarke evidently aspired to a place 
on the roll of those ministering angels whom 
the men of genius of future ages were to 
think of and bless. 

She opened her benevolent institution 
under peculiarly favorable conditions. In 
the first place, the external situation was well 
chosen. The Rue du Bac was, for her and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 47 

her principal habitues, the men of the Insti- 
tute, central ; and though the apartment was 
rather high-perched, it was roomy and bright, 
looking over a vast stretch of gardens at the 
back, and quiet even on the front then. Of 
late years ^ that rascally Bon Marche,' as its 
tenant would say, has made the street very 
noisy, but half a century ago it was tranquil 
enoiig-h. 

The social elements were of the best, being 
drawn for the most part from the circle of the 
Abbaye. Mrs. Clarke's fortune, though by 
no means large, admitted of her exercising 
the more substantial form of hospitality of 
giving dinners to her friends ; or, rather, of 
sharing her dinner with them, for she never 
gave ' dinner parties.' Fauriel, Roulain, and 
Julius Molil were in the habit of dining with 
her several times a week, as well as spending 
nearly every evening with her. 

Mary had, no doubt, profited intellectually 
by her training at the Abbaye, and had 
become highly accomplished in conversa- 



48 MADAME MOHL 

tion; but its refined manners and stately 
courtesies had not proved contagious, or 
corrected her waywardness and natural in- 
clination to Bohemianism. She had no man- 
ners to speak of, and it evidently no more 
occurred to placid, dignified Mrs. Clarke to try 
to give her any, or to check her wild ways, 
than to control the vagaries of her quick- 
silvery brain. 

It was the habit, for instance, when those 
three amis de la maison, Fauriel, Mold, and 
Roulain, dined at the Kue du Bac for every- 
body to take forty winks after dinner. To 
facilitate this, the lamp was taken into an ad- 
joining room, the gentlemen made themselves 
comfortable in arm-chairs, Mary slipped off 
her shoes and curled herself up on the sofa, 
and by-and-by they all woke up refreshed, 
and ready to talk till midnight. Usually 
other visitors did not arrive till the forty 
winks were over ; but one evening it chanced 
that some one came earlier than usual, and 
was ushered into the drawing-room while the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 49 

party was fast asleep. The tableau may be 
imagined. The gentlemen started up and 
rubbed their eyes ; Mrs. Clarke fetched the 
lamp ; Mary fumbled for her shoes, but could 
not find them, and, afraid of catching cold by 
walking on the oak floor, hopped from chair 
to chair looking for them. 

This 8an% gene did not, however, prevail at 
all times. The afternoon receptions, though 
perfectly simple and unceremonious, were con- 
ducted quite decorously. Very pleasant and 
interesting they must have been. Sometimes 
Madame Kecamier came in, in her favorite 
visiting dress of dark blue velvet, close fitting 
like a pelisse, according to the fashion of the 
day, and a white satin bonnet — or hat, we 
• should now call it — with long white marabout 
feathers, curling to her shoulder. Another 
picturesque figure was the Princess Belgiojoso, 
looking like some Leonora of the Renaissance, 
with her clinging draperies and great dark 
eyes and wonderful pallor. A story is told 
of the Princess arriving late one evening when 

4 



50 MADAME MOHL 

music was going on. Not to interrupt the 
singer, she stood in the doorway, quite mo- 
tionless, her arms hanging by her side. She 
was dressed in white cashmere, and wore 
jet ornaments, an attire which, with her im- 
mobihty and her extraordinary marble-hke 
pallor, made more intense by her lustrous 
black eyes and hair, gave her the ajDpearance 
of a beautiful ghost. Some one whispered, 
^ How lovely she is ! ' '- Yes,' replied some one 
else, 'she must have been very beautiful when 
she was alive.' 

Edgar Quinet, in his Letters, tells another 
characteristic story of this friend of his friend 
Mary Clarke. ' One of the Princess's poli- 
tical friends, a refugee like herself, confessed 
to her that he was in love with her femme 
de chamhre. She said he had better think 
it over awhile, and on the lover replying 
that he had already thought it over a 
long time, " Well, then," she said, " marry 
her ! " And he did. And the newly-married 
j^air are both the guests of the Princess, 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 51 

who has actually contrived to force her own 
maid on everybody, having her to dine at 
her table, and keeping her constantly in the 
drawing-room. Don't you call that coura- 
sreous ? ' 



52 MADAME MOHL 



CHAPTER II. 

Theee were two drawing-rooms at Mrs. 
Clarke's, — one for conversation ; the other 
for music, dancing, blind-man's-buff, or what- 
ever the company liked. The music some- 
times carried the day so completely that it 
silenced the conversation in the other room, 
and drew all to listen. Among the amateur 
artists who achieved this triumph ware 
Madame Andryane, wife of Silvio Pellico's 
companion in captivity, who many a time 
held old and young spell-bound by her voice. 
The Princess de la Moskowa, the Marquise 
de Gabriac, Madame de Sparre, and others 
made the evenings brilliant with their gift of 
song, cultivated as so many women of rank 
cultivated it then. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 53 

Another dilettante of talent was M. de 
Maupas, then quite a young man, making 
his dehut in society, and as yet ^uncor- 
rupted ; ' nothing tending to denote in him 
the future Minister of Napoleon III. 

Among the literary stars of the circle, the 
most prominent at this period was Fauriel. 
He was, ][)ar excellence, the ami de la maison, 
and therefore deserves a special mention in 
this record of Mary Clarke and her salon. 
Fauriel was born in 1772, and was conse- 
quently eighteen years older than Mary. He 
was already distinguished as a writer when 
he made her acquaintance. Jouffroy, the 
great critic, said of Fauriel's ^ Chants Popu- 
laires de la Grece Moderne : ' ^ It is a book 
that men of letters and historians will quarrel 
for, because it presents to the former a poetic 
monument of the greatest originality, and to 
the latter authentic documents on an un- 
known people whom Europe has just con- 
quered in the middle of the Mediterranean.' 
Fauriel was a man of rare goodness and 



64 MADAME MOHL 

refinement, and so extremely conscientious 
that whenever a question arose which put, 
or threatened to put, his principles at vari- 
ance in the smallest degree with the duties 
of his situation, his first impulse was to escape 
the difficulty by sending in his resignation. 
He had done this so often that it became a 
joke among his friends. One day, Fauriel 
was relating how he and some of his inti- 
mates had been distributing to one another 
imaginary political roles ; he was going to say 
what role had fallen to him, when Guizdt 
interrupted him with ^ You need not tell 
us, my dear fellow ; we know what it was.' 
^ And what was it ? ' asked Fauriel, in sur- 
prise. ' Why, of course, you gave in your 
resignation.' 

Fauriel exercised a fascination over men 
and women alike, and had the power of mak- 
ing himself equally beloved by both. His 
intimacy with Manzoni presents as charming 
an example of manly friendship as is to be 
met with even in France, where such friend- 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 55 

ships between men are less uncommon, per- 
haps, than in other countries; and he was 
the object of ardent admiration to some of 
the most brilliant and gifted women of his 
day. Madame de Stael, for instance, lost her 
heart wholly to him. ^ It is not your genius 
alone that attracts me,' she writes to this 
dangerous man ; * iliat borrows its chief 
power and originality from your sentiments. 
. . . You love all noble sentiments, and al- 
though you are not, it seems to me, of an 
impassioned nature, your soul being pure, 
delights in all that is noble.' 

If Fauriel did not respond with adequate 
warmth to these declarations, it was not, per- 
haps, so much because Madame de Stael's 
charm was less, as because Madame Condor- 
cet's was greater. In the year 1802, Fauriel 
had formed an attachment for the widow of 
Condorcet which had all the character of the 
most romantic passion. Why he never mar- 
ried her was a mystery to many, and must 
remain so still. Perhaps the reason was of 



56 MADAME MOHL 

that prosaic nature which in all ages has been 
the most inexorable barrier to the course of 
true love ; Madame Condorcet was not rich, 
and Fauriel was a poor man all his life. For 
twenty years he worshipped her as Dante 
worshipped BeatricCj and never wavered in 
his allegiance to her. She died in 1822. 
Fauriel was broken-hearted. He sought ref- 
uge from grief in study, and plunged into 
his great work, ^ Les Chants Populaires de la 
Grece.' His friends urged him to travel, but 
this advice was not so easy to follow. About 
a year after Madame Condorcet's death, how- 
ever, he decided to accept an invitation from 
Manzoni to visit him at Milan. There were 
many impediments at first in the way of the 
expedition, but they -were finally overcome, 
and on October 20, 1823, he writes to 
Manzoni : — 

' To embrace you and yours is the one 
thing I have longed for this last year. I 
know not even yet how I am going. They 
want to embark me wdth a Russian grand 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 67 

seigneur whom I don't know, and who would 
like very much, they say, to take me to Italy, 
where he is going. I shall see him ; but I 
don't think I shall agree to this mode of de- 
parture, even if I found it convenient. 

' On the other hand, I have promised two 
English ladies, who are now in Switzerland on 
their way to Italy, to join them en passant in 
case I make the journey, and I don't know to 
what delay or detour this promise may compel 
me.' 

The two English ladies in question were 
Mrs. and Miss Clarke. Fauriel met them in 
Switzerland, and they arrived together at 
Milan to pass the winter there, Fauriel with 
his friend Manzoni, and the Clarkes at a neigh- 
boring hotel. They were received at once as 
old friends by the Manzonis, and passed every 
evening at their house. The picture that 
Mary draws of his Italian home is as charm- 
ing as a page from one of the master's novels. 

* I was very young, and on that account 
very incapable of judging a character like 



68 MADAME MOHL 

Manzoni's, composed of so rnany deep and 
different elements. My mother and I spent 
all our evenings there that winter, but I 
must confess that we often played at blind- 
man's-buff with Pierre and Juliette (the eldest 
daughter) and Madame Manzoni, who, having 
married at sixteen, was more like the compan- 
ion of her eldest children. Manzoni enjoyed 
these games in his way quite as much as we 
did, though he did not join in them. He talked 
with M. Fauriel and my mother. I remember 
as if it were yesterday how once, after a par- 
ticularly lively game, he put his arm round 
his wife's waist and said, "Tu t'es bien amusee, 
ma femme ! " and she confirmed this opinion. 

'It was, indeed, a charming home. The 
mother of Manzoni, Donna Giulia, as she was 
called, added greatly to the charm of it. 
Sometimes fine people came in of an even- 
ing 5 but seldom, as neither Manzoni nor his 
wife went out. 

' Madame Visconti, then married to the 
Marquis Visconti (she had before that been 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 69 

the Marquise Triviilzi), used to come with 
her daughter by the first marriage, who 
afterwards married Prince Belgiojoso; she 
must have been about fourteen or fifteen, 
and passed for being the greatest heiress in 
Italy. She was above blind-man's-buff; at 
least I supposed so, for' when this lean monde 
came we never played. These were the only 
ladies of Milanese society that I saw there. 
Gentlemen used to come, but I don't remem- 
ber them. The Manzonis never went out of 
an evening, and paid so few visits that they 
passed for bears.' ^ 

After a winter passed in this pleasant en- 
tourage at Milan, the Clarkes proposed to 
Fauriel that they should make a tour to Ven- 
ice, where he was likely to find (in the Greek 
colony there) materials for his work on the 
popular songs of Greece. They set out on a 
lovely spring morning, and had a delightful 
journey. 

^ Vide 11 Manzoni ed il Fauriel, da Angelo de Guber- 
natis. 



60 MADAME MOHL 

Faurielj describing to Manzoni the inci- 
dents of the road and of their first week in 
Venice, says: 'I am afraid I am defrauding 
Miss Clarke of a pleasm^e in telUng you what 
befell us at Brescia. A young man, who rec- 
ognized us at once as strangers by the way 
we were gaping up at the palace of the Con- 
silio, very courteously volunteered to show us 
the chief sights of the place, and we thank- 
fully accepted the obliging offer. He took us 
to see everything, but the two sights that 
gave us the most pleasure were the remains of 
a temple of Hercules that are nearly dug out 
from underground, and the ruins of the con- 
vent where Hermengarde died. Miss Clarke 
declared she would not give these ruins for 
those of the Capitol, and I owned I found 
them much more touching than the temple 
of Hercules. . . . Mrs. and Miss Clarke can 
talk of nothing but you all.' 

The travellers parted company at Venice. 
Fauriel wandered about alone in pursuit of 
his Greek folk-lore. From Trieste he writes 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 61 

to Manzoni: *I have not heard from the 
Clarkes since I left them at Venice, but I 
dare say Miss Clarke has written to your dear 
Henriette, whom she loves for life.' 

The three friends met soon again in 
Tuscany, and visited Manzoni at his country 
house, Brusuglio, before returning to France. 

The recollection of this sojourn in Italy 
was ever after a source of fresh pleasure to 
Mary. She kept up, as far as circumstances 
permitted, her intimacy with the Manzonis, 
who on their side retained in affectionate 
remembrance the bright English girl. Man- 
zoni had formed a high opinion of her intelli- 
gence, and placed her on the list of the eight 
persons — all distinguished in their line — to 
whom he sent the first copies of the ' Adelchi.' 
In his letters to Fauriel frequent mention is 
made of ' la stimmatissima e gentilissima Miss 
Clarke,' and affectionate messages sent to her 
from all the members of the family. 

Mary, who was a punctual correspondent 
when letters were the only way of communi- 



62 MADAME MOHL 

eating with her friends, acted sometimes as 
secretary between Fauriel and Manzoni, who 
were both often too busy to write, Fauriel 
being, moreover, a very lazy correspondent. 
The following to Donna Giulia shows Mary 
apologizing for this vice in her friend, and 
trying to atone for it : — 

'M Fauriel is the same as ever, always 
loving you, but writing fewer letters than ever. 
I think if you could make up your mind to 
write him a few lines, it would act on him 
like an electric shock on a paralytic, and he 
would begin. Do try, if only by way of 
experiment ! 

'^ If my poor mother were not so suffering 
and infirm, or if we were rich enough to travel 
with every comfort, I should have been to see 
you this summer. . . . Life is short, and does 
not afford many pleasures such as those I ex- 
perienced at Brusuglio, and it is folly not to 
enjoy them when one may. 

* M. Fauriel's book has had great success 
for a big book in four volumes, and on a 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 63 

subject that is not of the day. I want to 
know what you all think of it. 

* He is publishing a chronicle of the Albi- 
genses and a translation, — or rather it is M. 
Guizot who is getting it published for the 
Government. M. Fauriel is working at it like 
a horse. It is folly on his part, it seems to 
me, for he won't get a penny for it, and 
hardly a copy.' 

Though Fauriel was sincerely attached to 
Mary Clarke, and remained her devoted friend 
to the end of his life, the feeling on her side 
seems to have been much deeper and tenderer 
than on his. The following letter, without a 
date, like all her letters, shows how she buf- 
fered from his sins as a correspondent : — 

' I am often so melancholy that I could die 
of it; but my life would be very pleasant if I 
had letters from you. ... I think, too, with 
pleasure over many things that you said to 
me in the winter, and which were swallowed 
up at the moment by the fire that was con- 
suming me. Perhaps you have forgotten 



64 MADAME MOHL 

them. Very likely, indeed, for they were 
far more important to me than to you. For 
the matter of that, we are continually Jailing 
and giving life hy our words without suspecting 
it. . . . 

^ If you have received any of my letters, I 
entreat you to write to me. It is in vain 
that I argue with myself, in vain that I tell 
myself I have a bad temper, that I have be- 
haved badly to you, that I must bear what I 
have deserved ; in vain do I tell myself that 
you are busy, that you have not a moment, 
— it is none the less true that this waiting is 
an intolerable suffering to me, and that each 
day sees the renewal of my struggle between 
hope and fear. At night I dream that a let- 
ter has come and I am going to open it, and 
then I awake just as I am breaking the seal. 
Dear friend, do have a little sympathy for 
me and give me a sign of life ; tell me at 
least why you don't. ... I have been very 
ill. Mon Dieu! does not that touch you a 
little ? ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 65 

As in the case of Madame Condorcet, it 
was a matter of surprise to many that this 
friendship, so ardent on one side, so ten- 
der and lasting on both, did not end in a 
marriage. Whatever the impediment was, 
Mary's love for Fauriel prevented her from 
thinking of any one else while he lived,^ 

Thiers had been intimate with the Clarkes 
from the prehistoric times of the Rue Bona- 
parte. When he came to Paris in 1821, a 
young man of five-and-twenty, he was intro- 
duced to Mrs. Clarke, with a view to enlist- 
ing her influence in getting him employment. 
She made him known to Manuel, the editor 
of the '- Constitutionnel,' who at once dis- 
cerned the value of the young aspirant to 

1 A letter of Mary Clarke's to Ampere, dated October 2, 
1830, says : — ' Monsieur Fauriel walked in last night with 
an air of vin de champagne that astonished me. Instead of 
dragging himself to the sofa and letting himself drop on it, 
he walked about as brisk as possible; and instead of inquir- 
ing after my toothache (to my great scandal), he said, 
"Ampere is named to the Ecole Normale! Cousin made 
them sign it as on a volcano ! " I wanted to hear more about 
it, to get details, but I could get nothing out of him. He 
told me to write to you.' 

5 



66 MADAME MOHL 

journalistic service, and put him on the staff 
of his newspaper. The Clarkes' society was, 
no doubt, a great resource to the lonely 
young provincial, and it seemed a matter of 
course that he should fall in love wdtli Mary. 
Pie used to come every evening, and talk 
with her for hours, staying so late that the 
concierge lost patience, and said to her one 
morning, '^Mademoiselle, if that little student 
does not take himself off before midnight, I 
will lock the gate, and he may sleep on the 
staircase ! ' After this, the little student was 
dismissed earlier. Though less assiduous in 
his attendance than in these young days, 
Thiers remained one of the habitues of the 
Rue du Bac. 

Merimee used to go there frequently to 
practise his English, at which he was work- 
ing hard. Mrs. Clarke helped him by cor- 
recting his mistakes, and Mary by laughing 
at them. 

M. de Tocqueville was another of their 
habitues, as well as Guizot, Cousin, Augustin 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 67 

Thierry, Benjamin Constant, Mignet, Bonetty, 
&c. — in fact, the cleverest men of the day. 

But among all these brilliant personalities 
Julius Mohl calls for chief notice, not merely 
because of his merit and distinction, but be- 
cause of the part he was to play in Mary's 
life. 

The Mohl family have for many centuries 
held a distinguished place among the noblesse 
de robe of Wiirtenibero-. Thev boast of a 
coat-of-arms granted to them by the Emperor 
Rodolph 11. in 1618. For four generations 
the head of the family held an office under 
the State which conferred on its possessor the 
rank and title of nobility. This life nobility 
was made hereditary in the person of Robert 
von Mohl, eldest brother of Julius Mohl of 
whom this record makes mention. Their 
father, Herr Mohl, was Minister to the King 
of Wiirtemberg. Their mother was of an 
old and distinguished Stuttgart family, the 
Authenrieths. She was a woman of consider- 
able merit, cultivated, clever, and energetic. 



68 MADAME MOHL 

The fortune of the Mohls was small, but 
Madame Mohl determined at whatever sacri- 
fice to give her sons the most complete and 
brilliant education ; her noble ambition being 
that no son of hers should ever be compelled 
to sell his opinions [vendre sa pensee). She 
secured to them all this intellectual indepen- 
dence, and they repaid her abundantly, at- 
taining distinction in their separate careers,-^ 
and loving their mother with the most 
chivalrous affection. 

Julius Mohl, from his earliest boyhood, 
showed rare taste for Oriental languages and 
lore ; and so great was his proficiency in this 
line that, at the age of twenty, he was offered 
a professorship at the University of Tiibingen, 
in Wiirtemberg. He refused it, on the plea 
that he could not become a teacher while 

1 Robert, the eldest, became a distinguished Jurisconsult 
and Professor at the University of Tiibingen ; he has pub- 
lished a great many books on political and historical sub- 
jects. Maurice attained eminence as a political economist 
and member of the Frankfort Parliament. Hugo was highly 
esteemed for his learning and science, and as the author of 
several able books on botany and physiology. 



. , HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 69 

still a learner. ^ I must/ he said, ' feel my- 
self master of Oriental languages before I 
attempt to profess them.' 

Soon after this he got the promise of a 
scholarship at the College of Benares, and 
went to London to make the final arrange- 
ments for his journey to India. From some 
unexplained cause the whole scheme fell 
through, and instead of going to Benares 
Julius crossed over to Paris. This was about 
1822. In Paris he set to work at his chosen 
studies, following M. de Sacy's Coiirs of Per- 
sian and Arabic, Abel Remusat's Cours of 
Chinese, and that of M. Burnouf, then secre- 
tary to the Societe Asiatique. 

Not lonoc after comins^ to Paris he met Dr. 
Roulain, an able and learned man, with 
whom he formed a close friendship, which 
they tested by living together for many years 
in perfect harmony. 

His meeting with Jean Jacques Ampere 
was another important event in his early 
Paris life. Ampere had just returned from 



70 MADAME MOHL 

one of his long journeys, and was the hero 
of the day. Everybody wanted to see him, 
to hear him talk — he was the most delight- 
ful of talkers. Julius Mohl met him for the 
first time at the house of Cuvier. He was 
extraordinarily brilliant that evening, and 
quite inebriated the company. They drew, 
him out about his travels, made him tell 
stories, and received all he said with the 
warmest applause. Julius Mohl knew not 
what to think of it. It upset all his conven- 
tional ideas of what a learned and literary 
man ought to be ; but when Ampere, yield- 
ing to the entreaties of the company, took 
his stand at the chimney-corner, and began 
to declaim verses of his own composition, 
exciting the feeling of the audience to en- 
thusiasm, the amazement of the quiet, rever- 
ential German student reached its climax. 
' Je n'en revenais pas,' he wrote to a friend, 
long after : ' I had never seen anything of the 
kind; and though, since then, I have been 
present at many affairs of the sort, I have 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 71 

never grown used to them.' To M. Mohl it 
was a totally new phase of literary character 
and deportment, as well as of social life. 

From this first meeting, however, dated a 
close and warm friendship between him and 
Ampere. He took a room next to Ampere's, 
and they lived almost in common for many 
years. The partnership was broken by Am- 
pere's periodical absences on long journeys ; 
but when he was in Paris the two friends 
were ' done for ' by the concierge and his wife, 
M. and Madame Felix. An eiitire dissem- 
blance of character between these two friends 
of Mary Clarke's did not prove any impediment 
to perfect mutual understanding. Ampere was 
remarkable for his absence of mind, and a sort 
of mental untidiness which reproduced itself 
in the disorder of his external and pecuniary 
affairs. Mohl, though unconscious as a babe 
of externals, was the most orderly of men in 
his mind ; he cared nothing for money, but he 
knew to a fraction how much he had, and 
how far it must go. Ampere's incapacity for 



72 MADAME MOHL 

taking care of himself kept his friends perpet- 
ually on the qui vive. Coming home from the 
Abbaye, one winter's night, shivering with 
cold, he stirred up the embers, and sat down 
to warm himself, piling up logs of wood till 
the chimney took fire, and blazed away so 
fiercely that it threatened the safety of the 
house. At this point Ampere noticed that 
something was amiss. He rushed in to Mohl, 
who was howling with toothache under the 
blankets, dragged him out of bed, and adjured 
him to put out the fire. 

Mohl's unconsciousness was of the most 
harmless kind. He would, for instance, wear 
out the carpet of his room till the holes tripped 
one up by the heel, and made treading upon 
it unsafe ; and when Madame F61ix called his 
attention to the fact, he would go out and buy 
a new one, and politely beg the tradesman 
who brought it home to spread it out over 
the old, it never occurring to him that it w^as 
necessary to remove the latter. 

Ampere, starting on his never-ending 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 73 

expeditions — ' dancing over the world like a 
will-o'-the-wisp/ as Mary Clarke said — would 
stow away his money in his stockings ; then 
he would forget this, and drop it about when 
pulling on the stockings; or he would lose 
the pair that held the chief deposit; or he 
would leave behind his portmanteau, and find 
himself stranded in some out-of-the-way place, 
and write home to Mohl to go and receive and 
transmit to him other moneys which were due 
to him. Mohl, though oblivious to an incredi- 
ble degree of his own wants, was the most 
punctual and orderly of men in managing the 
affairs of his friends, and would execute 
these commissions with the utmost prompti- 
tude, attending to every detail with careful 
accuracy. 

When the two friends were together, they 
found a great bond in common pursuits. 
They both followed the Chinese class of M. 
Remusat, and studied many other subjects 
together, making joint stock of their wealth 
of brains. In recalling those days, Mohl 



74 MADAME MOHL 

would say, ^Ah, those were the good old 
times ! ' 

Under a rough exterior and blunt manner 
Julius Mohl hid the kindest heart, — a com- 
bination that got him the sobriquet of le hourru 
hienfaisant. He was a centre of help, both 
moral and material, to his struggling fellow- 
countrjmen; assisting them not only with 
good counsel, but, poor as he was, by giv- 
ing or obtaining for them pecuniary aid in 
many a critical strait. For he w^as very poor. 
These ^good old times,' that in later years 
he could look back upon through the beauti- 
fying haze of memory, were times of austere 
privation and self-denial. He had brought 
his little patrimony with him, and kept it, 
not, perhaps, in his stockings, but in some 
bank equally accessible and unremunerative. 
He had nothing but this patrimony to live on, 
and he must go on spending it until he had 
completed his studies, and was free to devote 
to earning money some of the time now 
wholly absorbed by them. When an old and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 75 

comparatively rich man, he used to relate to 
M. Antoine d'Abbadie ^ how he had learned to 
spend exactly five sous a day on his breakfast. 
He invested in a sack of potatoes, which he 
kept in a closet off his room ; every morning 
Madame Felix boiled him a dishful of these, 
which he ate en salade with a sausage and a 
hunch of bread. This was the only meal he 
took at home. He was in constant request 
among his friends, and he had a dress-coat 
which enabled him to accept their invitations 
to dinner every day. One day it occurred to 
him, What should he do if any accident 
should happen to his coat ? ' Many a time,' he 
said, relating these rerniniscences to Madame 
d 'Abbadie,^ — 'many a time when putting on 
that coat, I have shuddered at the mere 
thought of what must become of me if any 
mishap befell it. For years that coat was an 
income to me.' 

But neither the coat nor his rigid economy 
could prevent his capital from melting away. 

^ The distinguished Orientalist and Ethiopian traveller. 
^ The wife of M. Antoine d'Abbadie. 



76 MADAME MOHL 

It had dwindled to the sura of two thousand 
seven hundred francs (108 /.), when one morn- 
hig a friend came to him in a state of despair, 
and asked him for the sum of twelve hundred 
francs : ' If I don't get it at once, I am a ruined 
man,' he said, ' and there is nothing left for me 
but suicide.' Julius Mohl was generous as 
the sunlight, and cared as little for money as 
any man in need of it could do ; but this was 
asking him for a proof of generosity and dis- 
interestedness little short of the heroic. He 
explained his position, and begged his friend 
to consider, before exacting the sacrifice, 
whether he did not know some one else who 
was better able to make it. No, the friend said, 
he knew no one. Julius gave the money ; 
but when he reckoned up what remained to 
him his heart sank, and he asked himself in 
dismay what was to become of him when the 
diminished hoard was exhausted. Fortunately 
help was at hand. A friend^ learned that he 
was in great straits, and went to M. Villemain, 

1 1 have reason to believe, though I cannot certify it, that 
this friend was M. Guizot. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 77 

who was then member of the Conseil Royal 
de rUniversite, and, describing Julius Mohl's 
character, his noble passion for learning, and 
his honorable poverty, claimed for him one 
of the pensions granted to students without 
fortune. Villemain was interested, and at 
once obtained for him a pension of three 
thousand francs. Julius had not been many 
months in possession of this affluence when 
he was named professor of Persian at the 
College de France, with a salary of five 
thousand francs. The appointment was a 
distinction which was rarely conferred on a 
foreigner, and his friends, Mary Clarke espe- 
cially, were greatly elated by it. ' Can you 
not,' she writes to Ampere, ' have inserted in 
two or three newspapers the bare fact that M. 
Mohi will make the twenty-seventh natural- 
ized foreigner who has been named professor 
at the Collesj-e de France ? It was Rossi ^ who 
discovered that he would be the twenty-sixth, 

^Afterwards Minister to Pius IX., and murdered by the 
Carbonari in Rome. 



78 MADAME MOHL 

when they talked of appointing him before, 
and the statement is exact. I entreat you, do 
this, and say nothing about it to M. Mohl, for 
he has not common sense on the point.' 

He gave, indeed, on receiving this appoint- 
ment a singular proof of what many persons 
would probably consider a want of common 
sense. He went straight to M. Villemain, and, 
after informing him of his nomination, handed 
him back his pension. M. Villemain took up 
the paper, looked at Mohl^ and said, ^ I do not 
understand.' 

'I have been appointed professor, with 
a salary of five thousand francs,' explained 
Mohl. 

' I know that, and T congratulate you ; but 
what has that to do with this pension ? ' 

^I have no longer any right to the pen- 
sion ; it belongs to some student as poor as I 
was when it was granted to me.' 

M. Villemain at last understood, and he 
expressed his admiration of Mohl's disinter- 
estedness with a warmth which in its turn 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 79 

astonished the young student as much as he 
had amazed his patron. 

Juhus Mohl related this incident some 
forty years afterwards to M. d'Abbadie, to 
prove the corruption that must have existed 
among men of letters, which alone could ex- 
plain Villemain's astonishment on meeting 
with an act of common honesty in one of 
them. 

M. Villemain, from this date, conceived the 
most profound respect for Julius Mohl, and 
took a creditable pride in proclaiming it on 
all occasions. When he became Minister he 
show^ed this regard by consulting him on all 
matters connected with Oriental lore, which 
was Julius Mohl's special line. If there was 
an appointment in his gift, any mission to 
the East, &c., and Mohl applied for it for 
any friend of his, the thing was done at once. 
Villemain would sign ' with his eyes shut ' any 
recommendation from Mohl. He considered 
his science and erudition inexhaustible. The 
explorations at Nineveh and Babylon were 



80 MADAME MOHL 

undertaken at Mohl's suggestion during 
Villemain's term of office, and carried out, 
as M. Botta repeatedly affirmed, on Mohl's 
indications. 

In 1844, M. Mohl succeeded to M. Bur- 
nouf as secretary to the Societe x\.siatique, 
and was elected member of the Academie des 
Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. He lived with 
Ampere till 1847 — till his own marriage, in 
fact. Julius Mohl was endowed with that 
kind of charm which makes a man loved by 
those who come in contact with him. He had 
' a charm like a woman,' people used to say 
of him. His goodness, his unselfishness, his 
truthfulness, his powerful intellect, his fine 
humor, his sparkling conversation, his innate 
gentleness under an almost rustic simplicity, 
made of him the most delightful of com- 
panions and the most valuable of friends. 
Sainte-Beuve describes him as 'a man who 
was the very embodiment of learning and of 
inquiry ; the Oriental savant, — more than a 
savant, a sage, — with a mind clear, loyal, 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 81 

and vast ; a German mind passed through 
an English filter — a cloudless, unruffled mir- 
ror, open and limpid ; of pure and frank 
morality ; early disenchanted with all things ; 
with a grain of irony devoid of all bitterness, 
the laugh of a child under a bald head, a 
Goethe-like intelligence, but free from all 
prejudice.' 

A charming and spiriiiielle Frenchwoman 
said of Julius Mohl that nature, in forming 
his character, had sldmmed the cream of the 
three nationalities to which he belonged by 
birth, by adoption, and by marriage ; making 
him ' deep as a German, spiritiiel as a French- 
man, and loyal as an Englishman.' 

The woman who was tenderly loved and 
patiently waited for by such a man for three 
terms of seven years could be no ordinary 
woman. Nor was she. Mary Clarke, if she 
lacked his high intellectual qualities, was in 
her way as original as Julius MohL Chateau- 
briand said of her, ' La jeune Anglaise is like 

no one else in the world.' 

6 



82 MADAME MOHL 

The following remarkable letter, which car- 
ries its own date, is the only one from Mary 
Clarke to Julius Mohl that I have been fortu- 
nate enough to light upon : — 

'Paris, August 5. 

'■ Dear Friend, — I arrived here just in time 
for the fete — that is to saj^, Monday evening, 
the 28th — dead with heat and fatigue. Every- 
body was in the streets, but there was no air 
of revolution. On Wednesday I went out at 
four o'clock in an omnibus, and all the Rue 
St. Honore was full of discontented people, 
but without arms ; nearly all the shops were 
shut, and I heard a few shots at five o'clock. 
I came home about six, having twice passed 
along the Hue St. Honore, which wore a 
sinister look. Everybody was sullen, talking 
in groups. If I were to judge from the people 
who were running, there must have been a 
great rising at the end of the Rue St. Denis. 
At last, about half-past six, we heard the 
firing, which was kept up an hour, with inter- 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 83 

vals, then single shots that ceased towards 
eight, and began again shortly before half 
past nine. 

'I was very anxious for the poor people, 
and I went off to the Pont des Arts with M. 
Fauriel about ten. There were groups of well- 
dressed young men who were talking in low 
voices. M. Fauriel had the greatest difficulty 

in making his way through from G 's 

house, Rue du Faubourg St. Honor^. The 

best of it is that the said G declared it 

would be nothing, and that every one ought 
to stay quiet ; and this is what all the ma- 
tadores of the Opposition did on Tuesday 
and Wednesday into the middle of the night, 
while the poor people fought like mad all 
Wednesday, without arms except the old pikes 
and halberds and sticks and anything they 
could lay hands on. I was near going down 
myself to fight with your old wild-boar sabre. 

' The tocsin was tolling all Wednesday, with 
the cannon and a running fire. At last I was 
so tormented, I had such a longing to go and 



84 MADAME MOHL 

fight, that off I went to Josephine, ^ whose 
house is right in the middle of the hottest 
firing, to know what was going on. You 
never heard anything so awful as the tocsin 
of Notre Dame. At Josephine's, the whole 
house was in a state of alarm, everybody was 
at the windows, and the troops were arriving 
in quantities at the Place Victoire, and there 
they fired away. But before they arrived the 
people rushed to the Place to fight. They 
clapped hands to the National Guard that 
marched past; it was a general enthusiasm. 
When they began to fire on the Place Victoire, 
I saw a lot of people running away whom I 
had seen going there before, and this threw 
me into despair. Josephine kept on saying, 
" Ah, you will see if these people will do like 
the Vendeans who threw themselves on the 
cannon ! " &c. Well, things were going from 
bad to worse, — at least it seemed so, — and 
I was obliged to stay and sleep. Between six 

1 Mademoiselle Josephine R , an old and life-long 

friend of Madame Mohl's. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS .85 

and seven I had made an attempt to get back 
in spite of the crowd, for we were all keeping 
company in the courtyard. In the streets the 
people were armed, and cried out to me, "Go 
home ! Get out of the way ! Take care ! " And 
the bullets kept popping plentifully in the 
court of the Louvre, where the Swiss Guards 
were intrenched as in a fortress. 

' I was so anxious to get back that I went 
on, in spite of the people's advice. Three 
very badly-dressed men met me. I asked them 
if there was any way of getting to the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain ; they said not by the Pont 
Neuf, but that I might try it by the Pont des 
Tuileries, and that they would take care of 
me if I liked. But, mafoi, there was less 
danger for me than for them, for though the 
troops were firing on everybody, they aimed 
with more deliberate intention at the people. 
All the same, I Went a little way with them ; 
but I saw in the distance a whole army above 
the Palais Royal (I was in the Rue St. Honore). 
And then a dead body that w^as lying on the 



86 MADAME MOHL 

road, covered, but with a bloody leg appearing, 
made me think that on the whole it would be 
better to go back to Josephine. 

' On Thursday I did get home finally at six 
in the morning, by the Pont Neuf, through 
the Swiss bullets which had swept the quays 
clean ; I can answer for it there was not a 
cat to be seen. Except the quays, all the 
w^ay I passed was crowded with people, who 
were tearing up the paving-stones and work- 
ing away at making barricades, over which I 
climbed as fast as I could, and I ran like a 
hare, I promise you. Everybody was calling 
out to me that I was going to be killed, and 
told me to get out of the way. But, to their 
honor be it said, they all helped me with ad- 
vice, and made way for me to pass, notwith- 
standing the great hurry they were in, for all 
were making ready for a most awful day's 
work. And the most curious part of this 
insurrection is that nobody took counsel with 
anylody^ nor comlined, nor calcidaied. Every 
one seized iveapons, tore up the paving-stones, 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 87 

formed into hands to take up positions, without 
forethought, just as if tliey had heen doing it all 
their lives. 

^When I got home, mamma exclaimed, 
"Ah, my God, tell me the news! I have 
been in such a state!" "What!" I said, 
" when I promised you that I would not ex- 
pose myself!" "Oh," she said, "I was not 
uneasy about you, only about the poor peo- 
ple !".. . 

' At nine the cannon, the firing, and the 
tolling w^ere really awful. There was no 
means of knowing anything, for all the portes- 
cocheres were shut. I cried out of the window 
to a man in the garden. He told me it was the 
Hotel de Ville they were taking. Well, this 
row lasted till noon, or near one o'clock, when 
M. Fauriel came. Like me, he had passed the 
night on the other side of the river, because 
he had gone to look for me at Josephine's, 
and, not being in the nick of luck, had found 
nothing but shots, none of which, happily, 
hit him. 



88 MADAME MOHL 

'■ They would not let him pass ; and on the 
Place Carrousel, between nine and ten in the 
evening, he met Cousin and two others, who 
w^ere also in the lurch. Finally, they got a 
lodging at a hotel. 

' I should • never end if I were to tell you 
all the absurd things that happened, and how 
Cousin turned the insurrection into fun, and 
called it a "blackguard," up to Thursday even- 
ing : and how Villemain and he and all the 
matadores took to the heroics on Thursday 
evening, and on Friday morning turned them- 
selves into mayors. . . . Ah ! one must be just. 
Lafayette had already on Monday evening 

sent to G to say that he was ready to 

come forward, and asked what was to be 
done ; but he is the only one, — he and his 
son, — as far as I can learn, who was ready 
to be up and doing without calculation or 
looking to consequences. 

' Adieu ! "We are very well satisfied ; the 
glohules are raging against the present Govern- 
ment, the people have more esprit, and have 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 89 

gone back to work. Write to me at once, I 
beg of you. They took the omnibuses to make 
barricades. Their effect, turned side upwards, 
was magnificent.' 

In 1844 Fauriel died. Mohl, who had been 
his friend for twenty years, nursed him in his 
last illness, and gives an account of the event 
in the following letter to Manzoni : — 

' You will have heard from M. Ferrari, who 
shared with me the care of tending him in 
his short illness, the sad details of his last days. 
It had become absolutely necessary for him to 
undergo an operation for polypus. . . . The 
operation succeeded perfectly, and he felt so 
well the next day that he had the imprudence 
to go to the Gallery of Antiques in the 
Louvre, where he evidently took a chill that 
brought on the erysipelas of which he died at 
the end of eight days. 

* I am busy examining the immense mass 
of papers he has left behind, in order to get 



90 MADAME MOHL 

published whatever is sufficiently complete to 
do honor to his name. Unfortunately, I have 
not been able to find a full copy of his " His- 
tory of Civilization in the South," to which 
he devoted for so many years the whole 
powers of his mind. I begin to fear that he 
must have destroyed the first rough version, 
that did not satisfy him, perhaps, and that 
he had not time to write out a complete 
new one. I hope you will permit me to send 
you whatever I publish of his, according as 
the volumes come out, for I know how ten- 
derly attached he was to you, and that you 
were one of the few whose approbation he 
coveted. 

^ I heard from Madame Arconati that you 
had the kindness to send to Miss Clarke the 
original of the portrait you had of him, and I 
beg you to believe that you could not have 
done anything more agreeable to the person 
who loved Fauriel more than all the world 
besides, and who is suffering from his death 
more than any one else. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 91 

*She is at present in England, and very 
poorly, which has probably hindered her from 
writing herself to thank you, 

' I have the honor to be, Monsieur, with 
great respect, 

^ Your humble servant, 

* Jules Mohl. 

* Paris, 52 Rue de Grenelle. 
' Sept. 21, 1844.' 

Mary grieved passionately over the loss of 
this devoted friend, whom she had loved with 
a tenderness that was, perhaps, a unique thing 
in her life. He had left her his library and 
certain literary papers, with the subsequent 
publication of which she took great pains. 
Two years after Fauriel's death her mother 
died, and Mary felt herself absolutely alone in 
the world. Mrs. Frewen Turner's life had 
drifted so far away from her French sister's 
that the latter was in some degree as much 
alone as if she had no kith or kin ; and the sea 
lay between them. 

About a year after her mother's death she 
consented to marry Julius Mohl. She was 



92 MADAME MOHL 

fifty-seven years of age, and he forty-seven. 
They naturally shrank from any display on 
the occasion ; indeed, they took as. many pre- 
cautions to keep the matter secret as if they 
had been a, pair of young lovers plotting an 
elopement. On the eve of the great event 
Mohl sent a note to his friend Prosper Mer- 
imeCj which ran thus : — 

*Mon cher Merimee, — J'ai un service a 
vous demander : faites-moi le plaisir de venir 
demain matin a dix heures me servir de 
temoin.' ^ 

Temoin in French means second in a duel 
as well as witness to a marriage, and Merimee, 
never dreaming that so confirmed a Benedict 
as his friend could contemplate getting mar- 
ried, jumped at the still more improbable con- 
clusion that he was going to fight a duel. At 
the hour named, the next morning, he walked 
into Mohl's room, exclaiming, * In Heaven's 
name, my dear Mohl, whom are you going 
to fight with ? ' Mohl reassured him, and re- 

1 ' I have a service to ask of you: do me the pleasure to 
come to-morrow morning at ten to be my witness.' 



HER SALON. AND HER FRIENDS 93 

ceived such congratulations as Merimee was 
capable of giving under the circumstances. 

Mary, on her side, had taken precautions 
not to be found out. She told her two maids 
that on a certain day she should go on a tour 
in Switzerland with a friend, and that she 
shoidd be absent about a month. On the 
morning of the marriage, she dressed herself 
carefully in her best clothes, and drove to 
the church in a cab. The ceremony was per- 
formed in the presence of the temoins^ and the 
newly-married couple parted at the church 
door and returned to their respective homes. 
Two days later they met again at a restaurant 
near the railway station, dined there with their 
witnesses, and set oft* on a wedding tour to 
Switzerland. 

The event passed off without exciting 
the amount of gossip it might have done, 
owing partly to a great crime which was com- 
mitted just then, and which absorbed public 
attention and drew private curiosity in an- 
other direction. Madame Mohl used to say, 



94 MADAME MOHL 

when relating the story of her marriage, 
'Luckily for me, the Due de Praslin killed 
his wife, and this gave everybody so much 
to talk about that they forgot me and M. 
Mohl.' 

Julius Mohl had dropped the aristocratic 
von before his name on becomina; a naturalized 
Frenchman,^ and his wife always called him 
* Mr.,' as if he had been an Englishman. 

Marriao-e did not chang-e the external 
framework of Madame Mohl's life. She con- 
tinued to reside in her old house, which was 
quite large enough, her mother's room being 
fitted up as a library for M. Mohl. 

Not long after their marriage, Chateau- 
briand died. He had long occupied the lower 
story of the house where the Clarkes lived. 
This had given Mary an opportunity of con- 
tinuing the intimacy begun at the Abbaye, 
and a day seldom passed without her spend- 
ing an hour, or more, with the poet. Her 
sprightly presence retained to the last the 

^ Somewhere about 1830. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 95 

power of amusing him, and smoothing from 
his wrinkled brow the frown of ennui Ions; 
permanently settled there. There were few 
now who thought it worth while to come and 
amuse the great poet, who had been so plenti- 
fully fed on flattery. But Madame Recamier 
was faithful and devoted as ever. Chateau- 
briand's health had been failing for a long 
time, and when it was evident that the 
end was drawing near, Madame Mohl asked 
Madame Recamier to come and stay with her, 
so that she might be within reach of her old 
friend at all hours. She came, and remained 
there three days. She used to sit for hours 
in his room, her blind but still beautiful eyes 
turned towards the dying man with a yearn- 
ing gaze that was indescribably touching. 
The tone of his voice was her only guide to 
his state ; by it she knew whether he was 
suffering or not. Never before had she felt 
the loss of sight so bitterly. ' Tell me how 
he looks,' she would say to Madame Mohl. 
' Does he look often at me ? Does he seem 



96 MADAME MOHL 

glad when I come in ? Does he seem in 
pain?' She was present at the end, and 
knelt beside him while he breathed his last. 

Madame Recamier survived her friend 
only a year. During the interval between his 
death and hers the Abbaye was like some 
deserted place, sacred to memories of the past. 
The very furniture of the drawing-room had 
a sort of in memoriam air about it. In that 
arm-chair by the mantel-piece Chateaubriand 
had sat and pontificated ; no one ever sat in it 
now. That other, to the left, had been kindly 
old Ballanche's accustomed seat. They were 
all gone ; and she, who had been their liege 
lady, their friend, sat looking at the empty 
places, and waiting for her turn. The 
message came to her in terrible guise. She 
had a morbid fear of cholera. When the 
epidemic broke out, her niece Madame Le- 
normant persuaded her to come and stay 
with her in the Rue Richeheu. She left 
the Abbaye with a certain reluctance, and 
scarcely had she done so when the spectre 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 97 

that she had fled from pursued and seized 
upon her. She died on the 11th of May, 
1849, 

If this event had occurred some years 
sooner, it would have made a sensation in 
the world ; but politics and the recent revolu- 
tion were absorbing everybody just then, and, 
with the exception of a little circle of faithful 
friends, no one noticed the setting of that 
sweet star which had shone so long and with 
such peerless lustre in the social heavens. 

Fauriel, as it has already been said, left 
Mary Clarke sole legatee of his papers, and 
she had at once devoted herself to the ful- 
filment of the duties this legacy imposed. 
Julius Mohl, with a generosity worthy of him 
and of Fauriel, aided her zealously in her en- 
deavors to promote the posthumous fame of 
the friend who had long been his rival. 

Among Fauriel's papers were found a se- 
ries of letters from Manzoni, dating from 1807 
down to the year of Fauriel's death, all breath- 
ing the tenderest affection, and an admiration 



98 MADAME MOHL 

amounting to enthusiasm. Why, Mary asked 
herself, should not the illustrious Italian pay 
a tribute to the memory of his friend by pro- 
claiming to the world the high esteem in 
which he held him? She put this question 
to Manzoni ; but, without absolutely refusing, 
he turned a deaf ear to the petition. Mary 
let the matter drop, but only for a time. 
Two years later she became Julius Mohl's wife ; 
and soon after this event she went to Milan 
and walked in upon Manzoni one morning and 
renewed her petition in person. It was not 
so easy to refuse it now, and yet Manzoni did. 
Not apparently from any lack of love for 
Fauriel, but rather because he had loved him 
so well and trusted him so unreservedly. He 
could not write about Fauriel without writing 
about himself, and that self had undergone 
many and great changes since the days when 
Fauriel and he had poured out their souls one 
to another. It was hard for the disenchanted 
man to identify himself with the youth who had 
discussed so confidently and with such high 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 99 

hopes the burning subjects which had kindled 
his generation nearly half a century ago. 

Perhaps along with this sentimental diffi- 
culty there was something of the indolence of 
old age which made Manzoni shrink from the 
effort of recalling and describing the past. 

Anyhow, he was not to be persuaded. 
Madame Mohl came away disappointed, and 
convinced that, as is so often the case, the love 
had been unequally divided, and that Fauriel 
had given a great deal more than he had re- 
ceived. 

Soon after this she published Fauriel's book 
on Dante, and asked Manzoni to accept the 
dedication of it. There is something very 
pathetic in the humility of love with which 
she perseveres entreating in behalf of her lost 
friend's glory. 

' My dear M. Manzoni,' she writes, ' it seems 
to me so impossible to publish a book on Italy 
by M. Fauriel without the assent of his oldest 
Italian friend that I come to ask for it. 



100 MADAME MOHL 

' But, indeed, all the memories of this friend- 
ship, which was a part of himself, so com- 
pletely overcome me that I lose all power of 
discussing it. I have the conviction that if in 
the other life we know what is passing in this 
one, he would himself be touched by your 
souvenir. I entreat you to grant my request. 
I don't abandon the hope of seeing you some 
day. I have never been able to tell you the 
great pleasure it was to me to see you. It 
was almost like seeing him. But what words 
can describe these things! 

*^ Accept, I pray you, the assurance of my 
friendship. 

' Maey Mohl.' 

This letter may be said to close the history 
of that friendship with Fauriel which filled so 
large a place in Mary Clarke's life. 

The revolution of '48 dated a new era for 
Madame Mohl's salon. From 1830 it had 
been a remarkable centre. The revolution of 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 101 

July had been fatal to salon life, as all revolu- 
tions are, and the political atmosphere had 
continued stormy long after the change of 
kings had taken place, and the new monarch 
was firmty established on his throne. Social 
life had suffered deeply from this disturbance. 
Young couples would quarrel in the middle 
of a quadrille, and a fair enthusiast for the 
exiled prince would break away angrily in 
the waltz from a partner who declared him- 
self for the new regime. The few salons that 
remained, such as Madame de Boigne's and 
the Princess Lieven's, became simply political 
coteries, or clubs where the members * made 
opposition' on one side or the other. 

Legitimists retreated to their fortress in 
the Faubourg St. Germain, and railed from be- 
hind its gates at the ' traitors ' who had gone 
over to the bourgeois King. The traitors were 
attacked with pens dipped in vitriol by the 
daily press; old wounds were envenomed, 
new ones inflicted ; the Chamber and the 
journals coalesced to abuse the Government 



102 MADAME MOHL 

and its supporters, and it was lien porte in 
society to make chorus with this abuse. 

This period of social dislocation was, never- 
theless, a time of intense social vitality. The 
national life still drew its productive elements 
from those ranks that constitute society, and 
this draught maintained in society itself that 
vigor which it has lost since the system of re- 
ciprocal supply and demand has ceased. The 
great want of the moment was a legitimate 
ground on which all this latent activity could 
exercise itself. The question was, where to 
find a field of enterprise for those who were 
hindered on all sides by barriers of political 
antagonisms. There was only one open — 
one where all might meet on neutral ground : 
this was finance. For want of nobler oppor- 
tunities, society took to making money. 

Money has been a power from the begin- 
ning of the world, and will be to the end. It 
was a power in the days of the patriarchs and 
in the times of the crusaders : but in those 
primitive and mediaeval ages, and even long 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 103 

after them, it was not supreme ; it was con- 
trolled and kept down by higher forces, as 
the vulgar parvenu was kept in his place by 
the gentleman. There were bulwarks that 
protected society against the encroachments 
of Pluto. Noble birth, for instance, was of 
more account than money-bags — it held them 
under its feet ; so did genius, so did mili- 
tary glory. These things had, virtually at 
least, survived the wreck of '93. But with 
the new reign came a change. The old 
chivalrous legend ^ Noblesse oblige ' was 
furled in the White Flag, and disappeared 
with it. The golden calf was set up on high, 
and many bowed down to it who had never 
done so before. France grew rapidly rich. 
The immense resources of the country took 
a sudden and extraordinary development ; 
railways, finance, and commercial enterprise 
were stimulated under Louis Philippe as they 
had never been under any preceding reign. 
This influx of wealth was undoubtedly a 
national and social gain, but it was also, in 



104 MADAME MOHL 

another sense, a social loss. If the shattered 
forces of society had rallied to the rescue, 
they might have made head against the in- 
vasion of plutocracy ; but they were divided 
against themselves. The old noblesse sulked 
in dignified retirement, and those of the up- 
per classes who had gone over to the consti- 
tutional monarch went with the stream, and 
the stream had set toward the practical. 
Gentlemen whose grandfathers would have 
scorned to handle money except to give it 
away, now went into finance, and were glad 
to let their sons go shares with an agent de 
change. It was the beginning of a new revo- 
lution, a golden sequel to the bloody one of a 
quarter of a century before, which was, in our 
own day, to reach its climax in the Bontoux 
adventure.^ 

This phase of discontent and irascible party 
feeling offered a grand opportunity to any 
one who wished to open a salon and pro- 
vide a pleasant meeting-place, where people 

1 The affair of the Union- Generale. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 105 

might breathe free from the pressure of pol- 
itics. Mary Clarke turned the opportunity 
to account. She cared very little about 
politics or parties, though a stanch parti- 
san of certain political representatives. Dr. 
Gueneau de Mussy, who knew her well, 
says that she had an intense admiration 
and sympathy for the Duchess of Orleans, 
and -a downright culte for the Comte de 
Paris, — a culte tiiat she would explain on the 
ground of the fine qualities she recognized 
in him. 

She was also a sincere admirer of Louis 
Philippe, and maintained, both during his 
reign and ever after, that his government was 
the one best suited to the nation, and that the 
French had been fools to turn him out. To 
the last day of her life she was faithful to this 
conviction ; and yet her friends remember how 
fiercely she rated Louis Philippe and his Gov- 
ernment when there occurred that theft of 
books that has since become so famous. A 
man named Libri, who was librarian under the 



106 MADAME MOHL 

G-overnment, purloined a considered number 
of costly books and manuscripts, old missals, 
and unique volumes of every sort, from the 
public libraries of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, 
&c., and carried on this systematic robbery for 
years. When, finally, he was found out, Ma- 
dame Mohl's indignation against the Govern- 
ment which had allowed the larceny to go on 
so long undiscovered, was beyond description. 
She abused the King and his Ministers and 
the whole administration with a vehemence 
that drove an old friend to exclaim impa- 
tiently, ' And so, forsooth, because one man in 
the public service was a thief, you would upset 
the King and the Cabinet ! ' 

This headlong violence against the whole 
regime on account of an individual defalca- 
tion was extremely characteristic of Madame 
Mohl's general manner of judging men and 
things. She was so entirely under the in- 
fluence of her feelings at the moment, that 
she lost sight, for the time being, of every- 
thing else, and went far beyond the bounds 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 107 

of reasonableness, and said a great deal more 
than she meant. People who happened to 
come in contact with her during this crisis of 
rage about the Libri robbery, and left Paris 
before it cooled down, carried away the im- 
pression that she hated Louis Philippe as 
she afterwards hated Napoleon III. It was 
merely a passing ebullition^ When it was 
over, she returned as firmly as ever to her 
allegiance to the liberal King. He was her 
first love in politics, and her last. 

Nevertheless, with the downfall of Louis 
Philippe began the most brilliant period of 
her saloUo It was also the date of her first 
hatred. She used to declare that the only man 
she ever hated with her whole mind and her 
whole soul was Napoleon III. She certainly 
did hate him with a rancor that never di- 
minished ; and although, as I have said, she 
cared very little for politics, and never 
encouraged political discussions, her salon 
took a certain tone from this hatred of the 
Emperor and the Empire. 



108 MADAME MOHL 

A good grumble is a pleasure to most of 
us \ but to a Frenchman a grumble against 
the Government is the sweetest luxury, and 
the knowledge that this was to be enjoyed at 
Madame Mohl's raised her popularity to high- 
water mark. Clever, agreeable men, who 
hated the Empire, either from principle or 
from disappointment, went to the Rue du Bac, 
and said witty things against * Celui-ci,' as 
Madame Mohl called the Emperor (accompa- 
nying the pronoun with a contemptuous jerk 
of the thumb over her shoulder), and were 
sure their wit would be cordially appreci- 
ated. Men who would not have met in any 
other salon, or who, if they had met by 
chance, would have scowled at one an- 
other, came together here as on neutral 
ground, where they felt as if bound over 
to keep the peace. Such a field of truce 
would be impossible nowadays; it was a 
phenomenon even at that time ; and since 
then ^ what a lot of water has run under the 
bridge ! ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 109 

The eclectic character of Madame Mohl's 
salon (with the single exception of its anti- 
Imperialist tone), together with her being a 
foreigner, made it easier for her to establish 
this kind of neutrality. It was essentially a 
mlon d'espjit. No matter what principles you 
professed, or what party you belonged to, — 
always with the one exception, — if you had 
esprit, you were welcome at the Rue du Bac. 
This was the attraction ; people went there 
simply for this. There w^as no party interest 
to be served — no personal interest, even; 
young men did not go to g^i pushed on in 
their career, to pay court to politicians or 
men in power; everybody, young and old, 
went to be amused and interested. This 
bright intellectual centre was considerably 
enriched from the time of Madame Mohl's 
marriage by a luminous contingent from the 
world of science that claimed Julius Mohl as 
one of its lights. All the distinguished men 
of letters, all the scientists of Germany, — 
Wolfgang Miiller, Raumer, Ranke, Tischen- 



110 MADAME MOHL 

dorf, Helmholtz,^ — in fact, the whole com- 
pany of distinguished Germans, at once be- 
came, in the measure of their opportunities, 
habitues of the Rue du Bac, while the con- 
freres of the great family of science all over 
Europe were proud to make acquaintance 
with Julius Mohl's wife, and swell the long 
roll of her visitors. 

Madame Mohl's salon now became one of 
the social features of the period j and it s|)eaks 
well for society that it was so. A great deal 
has been said of the money-making thirst 
that prevailed under Louis Philippe, and of 
the passion for parade and luxury that was 
developed under the Empire ; and though 
these accusations may have been exagger- 
ated, both were in the main true. The ea- 
gerness to get rich and the love of display 
were carried under both those reigns to a 
point without parallel in modern times. The 
simplicity which had survived in social and 

1 The celebrated physiologist, afterwards married to M. 
Mohl's charming niece. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 111 

domestic life under Louis Philippe, owing to 
the influence of the good and noble queen 
who presided over his court, quickly vanished 
under the Empire, and gave place to an ex- 
travagance of expenditure which changed the 
whole tone of society, and left on the social 
life of the nation a mark that is perhaps in- 
delible. The style of dress and entertainment 
rose so high that it was now not convenable for 
a lady to appear at an ordinary soiree in a 
dress that she might with perfect propriety 
have worn when paying her court to Queen 
Marie Amelie. The reign of crinoline was 
altogether a disastrous one for the women of 
France. It invaded their moral life, and 
lowered their character by lowering their 
standard. It shifted their field of action and 
narrowed the scope of their ambition. The 
ambition of the Frenchwoman, especially of 
that most accomplished type of the sister- 
hood, the Parisienne, had always been to 
shine, to rule her world, and to influence 
men's minds by her esprit ; and in this she 



112 MADAME MOHL 

had for centuries succeeded. She had been 
a preponderance in politicSj an inspiration in 
art, an incentive in religion, a moving force 
wherever man's head and heart were the in- 
struments to be played upon and the agencies 
to be stimulated. She had been admired uni- 
versally for her esprit and her charm ; to sing 
her praises as '■ une femme charmante/ ^ une 
femme d'esprit/ was the sweetest flattery 
that could be offered her. But crinoline 
changed this ideal of feminine vanity. Her 
ambition, or at any rate her primary preoccu- 
pation, henceforward was her dress. The 
crinoline made this inevitable ; it was a tyr- 
anny that imposed itself on the most sensible 
woman. She was not bold enough to discard 
it, so she had to submit to it. 

Other things rose to the keynote of ex- 
aggeration struck by this ugliest fashion that 
ever caricatured the human form divine. 
Quiet '^ at homes,' with a couple of lamps, 
glasses of eau siicree in summer and weak tea 
in winter, were replaced by expensive buffets 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 113 

and lavish suppers and brilliantly lighted 
rooms. Such entertainments exacted a great 
deal of money, both from those who gave and 
those who accepted them : consequently, those 
only could see their friends w^ho could afford 
to spend a great deal of money, or who chose 
to spend without being able to afford it. The 
result was, on one side-, a sense of ghie^ irrita- 
tion, and aching discontent ; on the other, the 
unhealthy elation of vulgar vanity and purse- 
pride. French society, from being the bright 
and refined centre which irradiated the whole 
society of Europe, became an artificial nucleus 
that blinded it with a false glare. The tone 
went down in proportion as the standard of 
extravagance went up. When w^omen had 
spent so much money on their dresses, they 
were naturally anxious about the effect the 
dresses were producing. They had been too 
much absorbed in preparing this effect to have 
any leisure for ' preparing their conversations,' 
as some of their pretentious predecessors of 
the last century were accused of doing ; there 



114 MADAME MOHL 

had been no time for that process of thinking 
which is the necessary and inevitable prepara- 
tion of all conversation worthy of the name. 
With the gentlemen, the fathers and husbands, 
who had their own share in these preoccu- 
pations, the same causes tended to similar re- 
sults. When they conversed, they were natu- 
rally careful to choose the subjects that would 
be agreeable to their fair companions ; but, as 
a rule, they did not converse with themj 
they kept at a respectful distance, grouping 
together in doorways, breaking away from all 
intercourse with the ladies, and leaving the 
crinolines in undisturbed possession of the 
floor. 

It would obviously be both absurd and 
unjust to attribute the decay of conversation 
to the influence of crinoline alone. Crinoline 
itself was the outcome of lowered social con- 
ditions which all tended to that decay. Con- 
versation perished for want of its natural 
wholesome food and stimulants ; grist fell 
away from the mill in many directions. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 115 

Owing to the strained diplomatic relations be- 
tween other courts and the Empire, the foreign 
element kept aloof; consequently, foreign af- 
fairs — literary, social, and political — ceased 
to furnish materials for talk in drawing-rooms. 
The aristocracy bonded the new court as it had 
bonded the court of Louis Philippe. Young 
men would not enter the public service ; they 
began to be proud of ^ doing nothing ; ' having 
nothing to do, they had nothing to talk about. 
Public affairs, la chose publique, ceased to be a 
matter of private interest ; impersonal subjects 
were no longer discussed. When all these 
reinforcements were withdrawn from conver- 
sation, there was so little left for it to feed 
upon that it naturally dwindled to small talk 
and gossip. 

While society, generally, was being 
swamped in this slough of frivolity and osten- 
tation, Madame Mohl's salon stood out in 
strong relief, with a character entirely its own. 
It was a permanent protest against the spirit 
and tendency of the day -, against pretension, 



116 MADAME MOHL 

purse-pride, vulgarity in every form. While 
it was being loudly proclaimed by high and 
low that luxury had rendered quiet sociability 
impossible, that the pleasures of conversation 
were a thing of the past, that unless you 
could ^ entertain ' in the modern sense of the 
word, no one would come to you,^ this old 
woman, without rank or fortune, living in 
high-perched, shabbily-furnished rooms, with- 
out either suppers or chandeliers, enjoyed a 
position unrivalled in its way, and contrived 
to attract to her house all that was best worth 
having in Paris. By the sole magnet of her 
esprit^ she drew around her the most remark- 
able personalities, not only of France, but 
of the world. Celebrities from every capital 
in Europe gave one another rendezvous at 
Madame Mohl's Friday evenings and Wednes- 
day afternoons. And yet strangers, who 
hearing of this salon had been at pains to get 
an introduction there, were sometimes taken 
by surprise when they entered it for the first 
time. They found a few quiet people, chiefly 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 117 

gentlemen, and most of them elderly, ' making 
conversation ' by the light of a couple of 
lamps, which modest illumination was dimmed 
by green shades out of consideration for M. 
Mohl's eyes. The one luxury of the room 
was a great many very comfortable arm- 
chairs, of all shapes and sizes. It was a no- 
tion of Madame MohFs that people could not 
talk their best unless they were comfortably 
seated. ' I like my friends to be snug when 
they are talking,' she would explain, if she 
noticed a curious glance wandering over the 
motley gathering of faideuik ; a good enough 
theory in its way (Madame Mohl once quoted 
St. Theresa, rightly or wrongly, in support of 
it!), but not infallible. Her contemporary, 
Madame Swetchine, had some good talk in her 
drawing-room, and only discovered a few days 
before her death that she had made her friends 
' do penance,' as she sweetly said in apologiz- 
ing for it, on hard chairs for thirty years. 

The refreshments on the Friday evenings 
were on the old-fashioned scale of simplicity 



118 MADAME MOHL 

and sobriety. On a table in a corner of the 
room there was a tea-tray and a plate of 
biscuits. Except when one of M. Mohl's 
charming and accomplished nieces was there, 
Madame Mohl managed the tea-making her- 
self, even to the boiling of the Water, which was 
done in the drawing-room. She built up a 
little hot-bed of embers, and set the kettle on 
it ; and if she detected a smile in the eyes of 
any guest who watched these preparations, 
she would say, ' French servants never know 
when the water boils ; and if by chance they 
do, they don't believe it matters a pin to the 
tea.' As a rule, she let no one help her in 
the operation, from first to last. There were, 
however, one or two privileged exceptions, 
notably Mr. Guy Lestrange and another 
young Englishman. These gentlemen were 
allowed to carry the kettle for her ; but this 
was the only aid she accepted. 

The amount of dress expected of the 
guests was regulated by that of the hostess. 
This consisted of a black silk gown, that she 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 119 

had worn all day, and a short skirt, guiltless 
of the faintest suspicion of crinoline, in an 
age when to look like a walking balloon was 
a law of decency to every woman. It was 
difficult to carry fine clothes, or pretension 
of any sort, into a salon where the lady of 
the house received you in this costume, and 
offered you an arm-chair that had seen service, 
— showing it, perhaps, a little at the elbows. 
To ji?os^, or aim at any effect but an intellectual 
one, in such an atmosphere was out of the 
question. Madame Mohl herself was too un- 
observant of externals to notice what any one 
wore, unless they were so fine as to strike her 
as 'gorgeous,' and consequently S'ulgar and 
ridiculous, my dear.' 

She could be observant, however, when 
her attention was called to the point. An 
English lady, hesitating to accept an invitation' 
to a Friday evening, on the plea that she had 
not a suitable dress, Madame Mohl said, ' That 
does not matter ; I will warn everybody not 
to make toilette' The lady, thus reassured. 



120 MADAME MOHL 

appeared in her travelling gear. The room 
was crowded with celebrities \ presently 
Thackeray arrived with his two daughters, 
prettily arrayed in light blue silks, &c. 'Now, 
my dears,' shouted Madame Mohl from the far 
end of the room, 'didn't I tell you that you 
were not to dress ?' A greeting that covered 
the timid English girls with confusion. 

An Englishman, passing through Paris, 
inquired of a friend who was taking him to 
the Kue du Bac whether he w^as expected to 
appear in a white cravat. ' Madame Mohl 
would not notice if you appeared without any 
cravat,' was the reply ; ' all she expects of 
you is to be agreeable.' 

In truth, to make themselves agreeable 
was all that she demanded of her guests \ and 
if she was strict in exacting this, she certainly 
did all in her power to make compliance easy. 
She had a charming acciieil, cordial, natural, 
and cheerful. She w^as glad to see you — other- 
wise you would not have been asked - — and 
she showed it. The moment you entered the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 121 

room you felt welcome. Madame Mohl took 
immense pains with the management of her 
salon, but it was done so cleverly that you 
never saw her pulling the wires. She ruled it 
with a strong hand, too. You were not per- 
mitted to be tiresome to yourself or to other 
people ; you were expected to contribute to 
the general fund, either by talking or listen- 
ing ; you were at liberty to hold your tongue, 
but you must not be bored \ you were not al- 
lowed to sit staring at the company through 
an eye-glass ; any one who offended in this 
way was pounced upon at once. 

Madame Mohl's was one of the very few 
drawing-rooms under the Empire where the 
gentlemen did not form themselves into groups 
standing in the doorways, and keeping aloof 
from the ladies all the evening. She never 
tolerated this habit, which has now, like 
universal suffrag:e and other remnants of the 
Empire, taken too deep root, apparently, to 
be eradicated from the soil of France. Every 
man who entered Madame Mohl's salon was 



122 MADAME MOHL 

expected that evening to do his duty, and his 
duty was to m^ake himself agreeable. 

Another unpardonable offence was making 
tete-a-tetes in corners, or chatting about the 
room in duets and trios, when conversation, 
real conversation was going on. Madame 
Mohl had no objection to flirtation. She 
pleaded penitently to having been ' a sad flirt ' 
in her day, and was lenient towards those 
who wished to indulge in the pastime. They 
were at liberty to do so at their ease in an 
adjoining room, sacred to this entertainment, 
as formerly it had been to music or dancing, 
but the flirtation was not to interfere with 
the conversation. 

Englishmen, and more especially English- 
women, were a great trial to her in the matter 
of whispering and chatting. As a rule, Eng- 
lish people do not understand the part that lis- 
tening plays in conversation. They have the 
reputation of being much more taciturn than 
the lively French, and so they are ; but they 
have not learned to practise in society that 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 123 

wise saying of one of the wise ancients, ' Hold 
thy peace, or say something which is better 
than silence ; ' they cannot hold their tongues 
in a drawing-room and listen, as the French 
do. This apparent inconsistency may, per- 
haps, be explained by saying that the English 
talk while the French converse. Now, talk is 
best enjoyed by twos and threes, in snug pri- 
vacy without any outside listeners ; whereas 
conversation is a kind of tournament, where 
two or three persons perform in presence of 
company. The English get a deal of genuine 
happiness out of these eye-to-eye, heart-to- 
heart, vital talks; the French find a great 
amount of keen pleasure in la conversation. The 
distinction is characteristic of the two races : 
the former hungering most after that mutual 
helpful understanding of mind and heart that 
we call sympathy ; the French delighting in 
the bright intellectual festival, where they can 
exercise their wits and other people's, going 
down into the lists and fencing and tilting, 
exhibiting grace and skill and prowess in the 



124 MADAME MOHL 

exercise, while the spectators ' assist ' in the 
game, controlling, protesting, cheering, now 
and then participating directly by throwing 
down a glove, challenging the combatants, 
giving them breathing space. 

Sj)eaking of the beauty of conversation as 
an art, Madame Mohl says •} — ' We are scarcely 
aware now in England how seldom we practise 
that form of talk which alone can be called 
conversation, in which what we really think 
is brought out, and which flows the quicker 
from the pleasure of seeing it excite thought 
in others. . . . Conversation is the mingling 
of mind with mind, and is the most complete 
exercise of the social faculty \ but the general 
barter of commonplaces we choose to call 
conversation is as far removed from its reality 
as the sighs of Casper Hauser were from the 
talking of ordinary men.' 

Madame Mohl had witnessed this delight- 
ful art at the Abbaye in its perfection, and 
even before that, and ever since, had enjoyed 

^ In a book which ■will be mentioned latei" on. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 125 

practice with the best performers of the day. 
There were certain rules handed down by tra- 
dition, and she insisted on these being strictly 
observed in her salon. The conversation was 
conducted in this way : One good talker took 
possession of the chimney-corner, — that tra- 
ditional tribune of the French salon, — and 
threw the ball to somebody ; these two kept 
it going, occasionally tossing it to any of the 
company who liked to catch it. Madame 
Mohl, who never took the tribune in her 
own house, was very clever at catching the 
ball when it was thrown out, haphazard, in 
this way; she would seize it and toss it and 
worry it like a kitten, to the great delight of 
the principal performers. She knew neither 
timidity nor mcmvaise honie, but would dart into 
the most learned discussion, like a child, with 
some comical remark, which perhaps betrayed 
entire ignorance of the subject, but never failed 
to enliven it. 

The chimney-corner of the Rue du Bac was 
held habitually by the most brilliant talkers 



126 MADAME MOHL 

of the day : Ampere, Montalembert, Lomenie, 
Cousin, Thiers, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Mignet, 
&c., in turn glorified that well-worn hearth- 
rug. It required no common impudence or stu- 
pidity to spoil such sport as this by breaking 
into tete-a-tetes. Outer barbarians, whose 
undeveloped instincts led them to prefer 
these, soon learned to retire into the adjoin- 
ing room, where they might chatter without 
disturbing other people's enjoyment. 

Madame Mohl's own powers of conversation 
were extraordinary, and quite unique in their 
way. It would be almost impossible to con- 
vey any true idea of the stream of wit, sense, 
and nonsense that flowed from her as sponta- 
neously and with as little self-consciousness as 
the sparks fly up from the logs when you stir 
them. She loved talk — not talking — and 
she was quite willing to talk nonsense, if by 
doing so she could goad others into talking 
sense or wit. The mind of a clever man was 
to her what the soil that contains gems or 
archaeological remains is to the passionate 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 127 

amateur in tliese things. She dug away at 
it with her bright little pickaxe, exulting over 
every fragment or bit of glittering treasure 
that it turned up ; never giving a thought 
to how she was performing the digging, or 
what effect she was producing on the bystand- 
ers. Her role was chiefly to draw other peo- 
ple out, stimulating them by contradiction, by 
approval, by criticism, by laughter, but always 
with inimitable tact. No one knew better than 
she- how to provoke a clever man into shining 
at the chimney-corner, even if he were not 
in the mood for it. One evening, Lomenie was 
there. He had been received into the Acad- 
emy that day, and was consequently the hero 
of the evening. He was an incomparable 
talker; but perhaps the pleasurable excite- 
ment of the day had tired him, or for some other 
reason he was disinclined to talk. Madame 
Mohl, however, had no mind to lose so good an 
opportunity. Seeing that indirect tactics were 
of no effect, she said bluntly, ' Allons, Lome- 
nie, racontez-nous quelque-chose ! ' Lomenie 



128 MADAME MOHL 

obediently began to raconter, and seldom did the 
hearth-rug witness a more astonishing display 
of fireworks than he let off that evening. 

Madame Mohl was sometimes accused of 
disliking Englishwomen. It was a most un- 
just accusation. She loved and admired her 
countrywomen above all others, and always 
declared there were no women friends like 
them ; but she did not care for them at her 
Friday evenings. ^My dear, they have no 
manners,' she would say. ' I can't abide them 
in my drawing-room ! What with their morgue 
and their shyness and their inability to hold 
their tongues, they are not fit for decent 
company.' 

Once Mrs. Wynne Finch asked permission 
to bring a friend on Friday evening. ^ My 
dear,' said Madame Mohl, ^ if your friend is a 
man, bring him without thinking twice about 
it ; but if she is a woman think well before 
you bring her, for of all the creatures God 
ever created none does spoil society like an 
English lady ! ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 129 

Madame Mohl was apt to make Englishmen 
chiefly responsible for this social inferiority 
that she complained of so bitterly in English 
women. In her little book on Madame R6ca- 
mier and other Frenchwomen, she enlarges 
con amove on the grievance : — - 

' In England a woman's beauty and her 
virtues are what a man thinks of in a wife. 
He talks with rapture of the woman who will 
nurse him and make his tea; but she is Ms 
wife ; he cares nothing for the society of any 
other woman, neither is his wife anything to 
the rest of society. In France such gifts are, 
of course, valuable to the husband, but the 
wife has others which are important, not only 
to him, but to society, to whom her nursing 
capacities and her coffee are not so interest- 
ing as her companionable qualities. "A-t-elle 
de I'esprit ? " is the first question asked, and 
the husband is as much interested in it as his 
friends ; for not only will her es-prit amuse him 
when they are alone, but it will also make his 
house the resort of an agreeable circle, and he 



130 MADAME MOHL 

is scarcely French if lie is indifferent to these 
advantages. . . . In France, society and con- 
versation are still necessaries of life. ... I 
know men who would rather live in extreme 
poverty in Paris than go elsewhere for a com- 
fortable home, because no privation is so great 
to them as the loss of that interchange of 
thought which they so easily find there. . . . 

' [In England] if a man is at his club, he 
does not consider it natural that his wife 
should have habitual callers in the evenino; to 
amuse her with the news of the day, as is the 
custom in Paris. He considers it right that 
she should sit alone, expecting his return. . . . 

^ There are old and frequent jests, from the 
days of the '^'Tatler" down to our own, about 
the cross looks of a wife, if a husband brings 
home a friend unexpectedly to a plain dinner j 
and no wonder that she should look cross, for 
the two gentlemen converse the whole time 
together; she is scarcely expected even to 
listen, so that the friend's presence throws her 
into complete solitude. In France he would 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS _ 131 

appeal to her ; and the habit of being attended 
to would bring out whatever powers or vivac- 
ity she possessed, and she would generally be 
found quite equal to the questions discussed. 
... I do not say that women are not politely 
treated in English society ; on the contrary, I 
have often been struck with the patronizing, 
kindly manner with which a gentleman ap- 
proaches a lady, and draws her out; but he 
does so entirely from good feeling, and so lit- 
tle for his own satisfaction, that she ought to 
be the more obliged. . . . 

^ A real English gentleman will be as atten- 
tive, perhaps more so, than a French one, to 
any woman he meets in distress or embarrass- 
ment, for in England revolutions have not 
destroyed certain habits of aristocratic good 
breeding ; but his chivalrous kindness will 
be entirely owing to the good will and good 
feeling he entertains towards the weaker 
sex. But a selfish man in France, though he 
may do far less for an unprotected female, 
will, if, he spies a look of intelligence, try to 



132 MADAME MOHL 

converse with her for his own pleasure, and if 
her conversation is piqiianie, he will be her 
humble servant as long as he can. The Eng- 
lishman will avoid all communication except 
for purposes useful to her ; and who has a 
right to blame him ? He has done more than 
his duty. He cannot help it if he finds no 
charm in her society.' 

This cdgre-doux panegyric of Englishmen's 
demeanor towards women was certainly not 
provoked by any incapacity on their part for 
finding a charm in Madame Mohl's society. 
Her own countrymen appreciated her esprit as 
warmly as Frenchmen, and were more ready 
to overlook her oddities. As a rule, she 
undoubtedly preferred the conversation and 
company of men to that of women, but not 
to the extent that her exaggerated w^ay of 
expressing herself sometimes led people to 
suppose. Her favorite protest, delivered 
with characteristic vehemence, — ^ I can't 
abide women !' — applied only to silly women. 
She was just as ready to admire a clever, 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 133 

sympathetic woman as a clever, sympathetic 

man. She had an odd notion that women were 

only silly from their own fault ; that it was an 

effect of ill will in them. It was a source of 

genuine astonishment to her that women were 

so addicted to idle gossip. ^ Why don't they 

talk about interesting things ? Why don't 

they use their brains ? ' she would ask angrily ; 

and if it were objected that they might have 

no brains to use, she would retort still more 

angrily, ^ Nonsense I Everybody but a born 

idiot has brains enough not to be a fool. 

Why don't they exercise their brains as they 

do their fingers and their legs, sewing and 

playing and dancing ? Why don't they read ? ' 

To modest ignorance, especially in the 

young, she was very gentle and indulgent, and 

would be very kind in lending books to young 

girls, and assisting them to make the most of 

their brains. She even forgave them when 

they injured or lost valuable books. This 

was a misdemeanor that M. Mohl dealt more 

severely with. He divided le8 homietes gens 



134 MADAME MOHL 

into two categories ; those who returned bor- 
rowed booksj and those who did not. Madame 
Mohl was very fond of young people, though 
boys she professed not to admire. Introducing 
an Enszhsh lad to some friends of hers, she 
writes, '^He is much admired by his parents, 
and he looks a good boy (for a boy) ; but 
they are a set of animals I don't patronize, 
because they make railroad carriages of my 
chairs.' Young girls she dearly loved, and 
entered into their pleasures and feelings with 
that quick and large sympathy that old people 
are often wanting in, but which she preserved 
to the very last. ' These young folk do make 
me make a goose of myself ! ' she would say, 
when she was taking some special trouble to 
amuse or indulge them. The innocent uncon- 
sciousness and simplicity of a young girl was 
to her something exquisite ; she enjoyed these 
sweet graces in the young as she enjoyed 
other lovely things. Her sister's grandchildren 
afforded her a great fund of this pleasure. ^ I 
have staying with me a niece of sixteen and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 135 

a half/ she wrote to her dear friend Madame 
Scherer/ many years ago. '■ Her father is a 
clergyman. She has scarcely lived in a town, 
is very innocent and very intelligent, and 
curious about everything except common gos- 
sip (a rare disposition in woman). I shall 
keep her now six or eight months, and prob- 
ably bring her back next winter. I should 
like her to see a girl of her own age who 
would be safe, and I am quite sure you would 
approve of her. She is so innocent in worldly 
matters that she wonders I don't return the 
call of such and such a gentleman whom I 
like, that he may come again soon ! I hope 
you do me the justice to guess that I never 
express any astonishment at these speeches, 
but say quietly, " It is not the custom." I was 
so pleased with the word inconsciente that M. 
Scherer uses, and which is greatly wanted (it 
suits her particularly ; she is most unconscious). 
I hope it will obtain right of citizenship.' 

^ Wife of the distinguished writer, whose literary articles 
in the Temps are so well known to amateurs and critics. 



136 MADAME MOHL 

Her German nephews and nieces shared 
equally Madame Mohl's affection with her 
English ones, les nieces Anglaises, as they 
were called at the Rue du Bac. 

M. Ottmar von MohP retains the liveliest 
sense of his aunt's kindness to him from his 
boyhood upwards. She took him to see her 
family in England, when he was at college at 
Bonn, and afterwards carried him on a round 
of visits to country houses. Of her sister, 
Mrs. Frewen Turner, and her home, Cold 
Overton, he has the pleasantest memories. 
' Mrs. Frewen Turner,' he says, ' was a charm- 
ing, kind, white-haired matron, the type and 
picture of the fine old English gentlewoman, 
as unlike Aunt Clarkey (the name Madame 
Mohl went by at Cold Overton) as one sister 
could be to another. 

^ Cold Overton was a small, Elizabethan 

"^ Now Imperial German Consul at Cincinnati. M. Ottmar 
von Mohl is the son of Julius Mohl's eldest brother, Robert, 
formerly Professor of Law, afterwards Minister Plenipoten- 
tiary from the Grand Duke of Baden to the German Diet at 
Frankfort. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 137 

house, with large grounds and broad avenues, 
and a rookery, and a fine old Gothic church ; 
a most interesting old place it was. Mr. 
Charles Frewen (the second son) lived there 
after his wife's death, and my aunt and he 
used often to tilt and fight each other, chiefly 
about the possession of an old sword, " le sabre 
de mon pere," that hung on the wall. . . . 

' It was a rare treat to travel with my aunt 
in England. One year (1864) she took me a 
round of visits with her to most agreeable 
people, — to her friend Mrs. Bracebridge at 
Atherstone, to Lady Salisbury (now Lady 
Derby) at Hatfield, to Dr. Lejeune, Bishop 
of Peterborough, to Lady William Hussell, 
&c. Everywhere my aunt was the centre of 
interest and conversation.' 

Madame Mohl not only enjoyed the society 
of young people, she entered into their young 
lives thoroughly. She was always ready to 
be interested in their love affairs, or to 
help on a marriage. She was not, however, 
much given to match-making. She had too 



138 MADAME MOHL 

much romance in her composition to take 
kindly to the French system of ^ arrang- 
ing' marriages. She recognized that it had 
its advantages, that it worked well as to 
results, and that it suited the temperament 
and habits of the nation ; but after conceding 
all this, she would add with a confidential 
nod, ^All the same, my dear, it is too cold- 
blooded for my taste.' 

One attempt of hers at match-making has 
remained memorable among her friends. She 
made accidentally the acquaintance of a gen- 
tleman who took her fancy greatly. Hearing 
him warmly praised by old friends of hers 
and of his, she asked him to come and see 
her. He did so, and she liked him so much 
that she made up her mind to find him a wife. 
He was rich, and she had a charming young 
friend who was not rich, and who would suit 
him beautifully. The two were invited to 
meet, neither suspecting Madame Mohl's sin- 
ister designs. She had not mentioned these to 
anybody. The young man, however, having 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 139 

failed to appear, she confided her scheme and 
her disappointment to a friend. ^ Do you 

mean M. X of So-and-so ? ' inquired the 

confidante. Yes, it was the same M. X . 

' Why, he is a married man and has two little 
children ! ' 

Madame Mohl joined heartily in the laugh 
against herself, and vowed she would never 
again try her hand at match-making. 



140 MADAME MOHL 



CHAPTER III. 

Like all persons who have a salon the entree to 
which is much sought after Madame Mohl was 
exposed to the risk of attracting bores and 
other undesirable acquaintances, now and 
then ; but she possessed the requisite courage 
for getting rid of them. Her impatience of 
bores, expressed in the formula, ^ I can't abide 
stupid folk ! ' made every one anxious to 
keep off the objectionable list by doing their 
best to be pleasing in her company ; but stupid 
folk, as a rule, steered clear of her. She de- 
nounced dulness, and fled from it as other 
people do from vice or pestilence, and made 
it responsible for most of the wickedness that 
goes on in the word. There was sense and 
truth underlying this exaggeration. A vast 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 141 

deal of mischief and wickedness may undoubt- 
edly be traced to dulness: people begin by 
killing time because they are dull, and from 
this first murder they go on killing many 
other things. But Madame Mohl's principle 
of self-defence against dulness and dull people 
involved a certain asperity of manner and a 
degree of boldness that sometimes degener- 
ated to downright rudeness. A friend hav- 
ing remarked to her that Mrs. had not 

returned to the Rue du Bac after a first visit, 
because she fancied Madame Mohl had been 
rude to her, Madame Mohl replied, '■ It was 
no fancy ; I was rude to her, and I meant 
to be. She is a silly woman and a bore, and 
I want no bores in my salon.' 

At the same time, she was very careful 
never to commit herself deliberately to any ac- 
quaintance that might lead her into being rude, 
or acting with apparent unkindness or caprice. 
When people asked to be introduced to her, la- 
dies especially, she always took pains to find out 
whether they were * all right,' as she called it. 



142 MADAME mMOHL 

The following letter, written to Madame 
Sclierer, is interesting as a proof of this pre- 
cautionary system, and as revealing some of 
Madame Mohl's opinions : - — 

* Do tell me if Madame X is a proper 

woman, whom one can see, and not an embryo 
Madame Dudevant ; for the first novel (" Indi- 
ana ") of this one w^as very much of the same 
sort, and I took a great fancy to her. Luckily, 
I was too young then to make acquaintances 
on mj own hook, or else I should have had 
the desagremcnt of being obliged to get rid of 
her. Do tell me if you know the said lady, and 
what you think of her. How^ever I believe it 
is as well not to enter so deeply, in writing, 
into the question of men and w^omen and their 
nature ; but I must say that both this lady and 
George Sand have been unlucky in the men 
they have met with, for I have kno^vn much 
better ones, and I think if some are as bad 
as they make them out, there are as many 
exceptions to these as there are exceptions 
to the silly, vain, backbiting race which is 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 143 

perpetually obtruding itself before one's eyes 
in the shape of women. 

* As to George Sancl, poor thing, I question 
if she has ever had an acquaintance with any 
man whom I should condescend to talk an 
hour with ; and it is mortifying to think that 
such a distinguished woman should have 
had such a want of tact as to have taken up 
with such Bohemians. 

^Do you remember the character of Dori- 
forth in "A Simple Story"? I am quite 
sure it is from nature. In fact, I know some 
one very like him, and have no doubt Mrs. 
Inchbald drew from the life. It is so beauti- 
ful and so individual and so uncommonplace 
that I have no doubt she knew him well, and 
that she was like Miss Milner. As I have read 
it about six times I am well acquainted with 
it. I knew a lady who Avas old when I was 
young; she knew Mrs. Inchbald when she 
was young, and Mrs. Inchbald was old, and 
so I have a few traditions of her. But if 
you don't worship the genius that wrote " A 



144 MADAME MOHL 

Simple Story," I'll say no more. But what a 
havardage I am regaling you with ! ' 

She was often rude to those whom she 
liked best, for, whatever she felt, out it came ; 
but she was thoroughly loyal ; whatever she 
had to say, she said it to your face, never be- 
hind your back. This sense of security that 
she ins]3ired in all who knew her enabled her 
to express the rudest things without giving 
offence \ the men forgave her because she was 
a woman, and the women because she was an 
originale. Her male friends, whose name was 
legion, took it, indeed, as a compliment when 
she contradicted them outrageously, for it 
was only with very clever people that she 
cared to pick a fight ; it was her peculiar way 
of flattery. 

It is often asked now, as it was often 
asked during her lifetime by those who did 
not know Madame Mohl, w^hat the great 
charm was which, from youth to old age, 
attracted and kept attached to her so many 
distinguished men through years of close and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 145 

familiar intercourse. Perhaps her first and 
most irresistible charm was her brightness. 
This brightness was the scintillation of a mind 
glittering as a star, ever in motion like a 
mineral spring whose waters are perpetu- 
ally bubbling up in silvery sparks. The next 
was her realness. It seems little to say of a 
clever, rational woman that she was real ; and 
yet of how few we can say it ! Madame de 
Sevigne (or Madame de Maintenon, was it ?) 
said, ^ E-ien n'est beau, mais rien n'est difficile 
comme le simple.' Perhaps in our matter- 
of-fact age it is a little easier to be simple, to 
be real, than it was in the grand siecle when 
people walked on stilts ; but even now it is 
very seldom that we meet with perfectly real 
human beings, and when* we do how we enjoy 
them ! Madame Mohl was one of these rare 
specimens. Then, again, she had a contented 
spirit, a keen delight in her fellow-creatures, 
great tact, and a perfectly childlike natural- 
ness of manner. All these gifts made up 
a very original and attractive personality. 

10 



146 MADAME MOHL 

Those who only judged from her eccentric 
external disguise were apt to account for the 
popularity of her salon by saying that all 
these clever people went there for the sake 
of the other clever people who went there. 
But why did these others go in the first 
instance ? 

A distinguished man of science, a German, 
and a great admirer of Madame Mohl (but 
who knew her only in her old age), when 
asked wherein lay her great charm, replied, 
' In the absence of it. I never knew a woman 
so devoid of charm (in the ordinary sense of 
the word as applied to woman), and yet so 
fascinating. She was hardly a woman at all. 
We none of us looked upon her as a woman : 
we met her on equal terms, as if she had been 
a man ; she was more like a man ; her mind 
was essentially masculine ; it had that faculty 
of looking at every side of a subject that you 
seldom meet in a woman, and she never 
expected compliments. This set men very 
much at ease with her; one could talk to 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 147 

lier without any effort to make one's self 
agreeable.' 

Perhaps this estimate of her accounts 
better than any other for her popularity. It 
has been said that Madame Mohl's salon 
presented a unique exception in the history 
of social pre-eminence. Women of mediocre 
intelligence have founded salons and drawn 
clever men around them by the power of 
personal beauty, aided by the bait of luxu- 
rious or brilliant surroundings. But Madame 
Mohl possessed none of these potent, though 
secondary advantages; her sole spell was 
the intellectual fascination that she exercised. 
'Her perceptions were so acute,' says her 
German friend, ^ that she darted into your 
mind, seized on your ideas and views, and 
turned them round on all sides before you 
were aware of it, often showing you more in 
them than you had yourself discovered.' 

She read some books again and again, 
saturating her mind with them; but these 
were the few. She devoured an immense 



148 MADAME MOHL 

quantity of books — the process was too rapid 
to be called reading, or to admit of her di- 
gesting them ; and yet even this she escaped 
when she could get the work done by a 
quicker method. When a new book appeared, 
whose contents she wished to know without 
the trouble of finding them out herself, she 
would set two or three clever men to talk 
about it before her; and by the time they 
had done she knew as much about it as they 
did ; quite as much, at any rate;, as she would 
have learned by running through it herself. 
She never paraded under false pretences the 
knowledge she got in this way. She would 
say honestly, ^ Tell me what is in So-and- 
so's book ; I haven't time to read it.' Her 
memory was so retentive that this reading by 
proxy served her as well as a direct perusal 
of the book. She was not learned, in any 
sense, but she was cultivated and remarkably 
well informed, and her subtle instinct enabled 
her to get at once into the heart of a subject 
of which she had only the slightest knowledge. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 149 

Men of science and letters loved to talk over 
their labors and their books with her because 
of this faculty and her power of being inter- 
ested in everything that was interesting ; but 
they did not seek her counsel, nor invite 
her criticism, as they are apt to do with 
women who, without having nearly so much 
esprit as Madame Mohl, possess a finer critical 
faculty. 

How careful and studious was her manner 
of reading when she set about it seriously may 
be seen from her own testimony. When M. 
Ampere sent her his ' Histoire Eomaine a 
Eome,' she wrote to him : ' I have received 
your two beautiful volumes, and I have read 
the Introduction, which I like exceedingly. 
I am now reading the book itself; but it is 
one of those books that I study, which is quite 
a different thing from reading. I have my 
maps of modern Rome that I compare with 
your maps, and I read the text twice over. 
This is the only way I really enjoy a book ; 
for my mind is slow, and I have to penetrate 



150 MADAME MOHL 

myself with the subject. This is why I can't 
bear " perusing " a book, except with a view to 
reading it again. I like to copy out bits, too. 
In this way, although I am always in the 
midst of books, I read very few, w^iile read- 
ing a good deal. In the matter of books, I 
have some friends, but few acquaintances; 
and I hate short books, because, after taking 
all this trouble to get to know my friends 
well, I don't like them to come suddenly to 
an end.' 

Madame Mohl had no talent for writing, 
and still less taste for it. It is partly owing 
to this that I have been able to get so few of 
her letters. She wrote few. She carried on 
no regular correspondence with any one, but 
just wrote off to her friends when she had 
something to say that would not wait, or 
when she wanted news of them. The follow- 
ing interesting one is to Ampere during one 
of his sojourns in Rome ; like almost every 
letter of hers that is extant, it is without a 
date : — 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 151 

'' I beg jou will bring out all your amaUlite 
for the lady who will give you this note, — 
Lady William Eussell. She is sister-in-law of 
Lord John. She has a great deal of esprit, 
and. speaks French in perfection. Like me 
she came to France when she was three years 
old ; then she went to Austria, so that she 
has had a European education. Her husband 
was Ambassador at Berlin, and before that 
at Stuttgardt ; her sons were brought up "at 
Berlin. As a little girl, she saw Madame de 
Stael play comedy. She was very pretty, — 
one sees that still ; so that all the kings made 
court to her. In fact, she has led a life 
something like that of our dear Madame 
Recamier. She has known all the distin- 
guished people of the age. I am sure you 
will be delighted with her. Her son, Odo 
Russell,^ is English attache at Florence, and 
detacM at Rome ; a diplomatic fiction, it 
appears, which permits of communication 

^ Lord Ampthill, late ambassador of the Court of St. 
James at Berlin. 



152 MADAME MOHL 

being kept up on the sly between our evan- 
gelical nation and your Babylon, and 

prevents the scandal of sending a Minister to 
idolaters ! 

* If by chance Lady William does not go, 
this note will be handed to you by the above- 
named functionary, who is young, gentil^ and 
spirituel, or by his brother Arthur, who has 
qualities of the same kind. But I hope 
you will see the lady herself; her conver- 
sation will remind you of our causeries of long 
ago. 

' M. Mohl is always going to w^ite you an 
enormous letter; but he has so much to do 
that whenever he has a moment's respite he 
talks, to rest himself. He is on an unlimited 
number of committees. He is exasperated. 
Ah, M. Ampere, what a wise man you are! 
But we are more virtuous; we stay on to 
make head against the torrent of platitudes 
that seems to be submerging everything. I 
know a few people who, being formerly em- 
ployes, had not the faculty of living on air, and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 153 

SO remained in their places. Well, nobody is 
now more indignant than they are, because 
they see all that is going on closer than we 
honest haters who stick in our corner. A few 
years more, and we shan't know how to dis- 
tinguish good from evil. They write novels 
nowadays that have great success (I am told), 
whose moral tone is inconceivably low. One 
of them is called "Fanny." But I should 
never end if I began to enumerate these 
things. We want badly M. de Lomenie to 
be named to the Institute. He ought for 
this to write something, — but he says he 
has not time, — some bit of really good lit- 
erary work. I am sure he would pass ea- 
sily, he is such a favorite, and he is such a 
good fellow. You ought to have been here 
to manage this. 

^ I have no time to write more. Do write 
if only to prove that you have not forgotten 
this country. Adieu, dear M. Ampere. I 
embrace you with all my heart in sign of our 
old friendship.' 



154 MADAME MOHL 

Here is another letter to Ampere, very 
expressive of Madame Mohl's opinions and of 
her extremely emphatic manner of enunciat- 
ing them : — 

^ You don't know how I abhor the Hun- 
garians ! They are the vilest canaille I have 
ever seen. And I have seen them in their 
own country. Nothing enrages me like the 
enthusiasm of the Ensrlish for those fellows. 

o 

Because a few grand seigneurs receive them 
well, and send them from chateau to chateau 
in carriages and four, — the horses being pro- 
vided by the peasantry, as in the Middle 
Ages, — the people cry, " What a fine nation 
they are ! " God knows that all modern 
corruption is grafted on these feudal galan- 
teries. I admire the Middle Aojes as much as 
anybody, but I should like that period back 
with faith, and not wedded to socialism and 
the rage for setting up the low, ignorant 
classes. One must have seen this (in 
Hungary) to have an idea of it. All their 
patriotism consists in a costume. There are 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 155 

a few heroic seigneurs like Szeclienyi/ and 
he went mad with grief at seeing the people 

1 Count Szechenyi was a patriot fully deserving of Madame 
Mohl's good opinion. He was a great benefactor of his 
country, a pioneer in the development of its resources, taught 
his countrymen to build bridges and dig canals, opened for 
them the navigation of the Danube, was the great regenerator 
of the language, and helped to sweep away certain remnants of 
medisevalism which Madame Mohl falls foul of. An ardent 
patriot, he was at the same time a devoted adherent of the 
House of Hapsburg, He would have had Hungary united 
with, but not absorbed into, the Austrian Empire. It is a 
curious proof of his political sagacity and foresight that the 
end at which he aimed has now been reached, to the apparent 
satisfaction of all concerned. 

When the events of 1848 seemed to make the realization 
of his dream forever impossible, and Hungary and Austria 
were facing each other as enemies on the battle-field, Szech- 
enyi lost heart and his mind gave way. He saw his country 
irretrievably ruined, and accused himself as the guilty cause. 
As he was being taken to an asylum for the insane he at- 
tempted suicide by plunging into the Danube, but was rescued. 
In the asylum, where he remained for twelve years, he par- 
tially recovered his reason. Friends kept him informed of 
all that went on, and in his lucid intervals he held conferences 
with legislators and statesmen, published pamphlets, wrote 
articles which were printed in the Times, and showed himself, 
though confined in a madhouse, more clear-sighted in regard 
to the interests of Hungary and Austria alike than any of his 
contemporaries. 

Finally, in April,' 1860, a domiciliary visit from the police, 
to which he was subjected by order of the Austrian Govern- 
ment, brought on a fresh access of violent insanity, and he 



156 MADAME MOHL 

he had sacrificed himself for. The Austrians 
are absurd ; that is to say, the government 
is disgusting, for the people are good ; but 
there is no hope, I fear, for those who are 
opposing it, so I try not to think about that, 
or about anything ; for here, too, we are in 
a state of despair. I read books, and carry 
my feelings as well as I can. My only con- 
solation is music' 

This was one of the minor points on 
which she and M. Mohl differed. She loved 
music passionately ; he absolutely disliked it. 
He used to say, 'I don't mind any amount 
of natural noise, but I can't bear unnatural 
noises, like music' He rather enjoyed the 
deafening racket of a paved street in the 
busiest quarter of the town, on the ground 
that it was ^ natural ' and lively. 

He went on one occasion in London to 

shot himself through the head with a pistol. There was an 
immense concourse at his funeral. His popularity, which at 
one time had paled before the revolutionary vehemence of 
Kossuth, revived after his death, and he became once more 
the nation's idol, ' The Great Magyar.^ 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 157 

meet Jenny Lind at the house of their 
common friend, Madame Salis Schwabe. The 
savant and the artist talked pleasantly together 
for a time, until a movement in the room 
announced that the latter was going to sing, 
v^hen M. Mohl quietly slipped out and went 
down to the supper-room, whence everybody 
was hurrying up in a flutter of delighted 
expectation. ^ Don't you want to hear Jenny 
Lind?' asked some one of M. Mohl in sur- 
prise. ^I wanted to hear her talk, and I 
enjoyed that very much,' he replied, ^but 
I don't want to hear her sing. -When that 
noise is over I will go upstairs again.' 

Madame Mohl had been repeatedly urged 
to write something about Madame Eecamier, 
but had always refused, fearing that she 
might be led into speaking indiscreetly, if she 
spoke at all. The sacredness of private life 
had not yet ceased to be respected, and she 
shrank from ' turning to account ' her intimacy 
with Madame Recamier, as others had been ac- 
cused of doing. This scruple was, however, 



158 MADAME MOHL 

removed by the publication of Madame 
Recamier's Life and Letters by her niece, 
Madame Lenormant. Madame Mohl consid- 
ered it her duty now to come forward and 
correct certain erroneous impressions which 
this publication, though written in the most 
eulogistic spirit, had, she believed, made on 
the public mind. She accordingly wrote a 
charming little memoir of her old friend, 
which appeared jfirst in the ' National Eeview,' 
and afterwards in a volume ^ with some other 
sketches of French character and social life. 
In the preface of the memoir, Madame Mohl 
says, speaking of Madame Lenormant's Life 
and Letters : — 

^ The book gave rise in England to so 
many mistaken judgments and false conclu- 
sions, that although, from having spoken 
French from my childhood, I was ill prepared 
for the task, yet my friendship for Madame 
Recamier, and eighteen years of constant 

1 Madame Recamier, with a Sketch of the History of Society 
in France. By Madame M . Chapman & Hall. 1862. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 159 

intercourse with her, emboldened me to show 
her character and the events of her life as 
they had appeared to me.' 

Ampere was one of the first to whom she 
presented her little literary production. In 
sendino; it to him she writes : — 

' I am ashamed of it ; but I was possessed 
by one idea, — the small capacity of the public 
for attention. Then, again, it is the first time 
that I have felt the pulse of this public. I 
believe now I was wrong to leave out a 
good many facts and observations that I had 
written. I beg you to remember, in reading 
the book, that it was written for England, 
where many things are entirely unknown 
that are known to everybody in France. I 
don't go the length of saying " a certain poet 
called Shakespeare," as you accused me of 
doing here. One or two persons to whom I 
sent the book have put questions to me that 
would amaze you. In fact, I am convinced 
that I have left out many things that, for all 
they are so generally known here, are not the 



160 MADAME MOHL 

least understood in England. But above all 
I was moved to write the book by my im- 
patience at seeing that what is most subtle 
and elevated in French character is absolutely 
undiscovered in England. For you this ideal 
is a commonplace fact, dear M. Ampere ; but 
please bear in mind my intention, and excuse 
the execution, — as God does, and as men 
don't do.' 

Ampere, though greatly pleased with the 
book, spiced his praise with a little criticism on 
certain points. Madame Mohl took the criti- 
cism as frankly as it was given, and replied : — 

' Far from being vexed by your sincerity, 
I am greatly obliged for it, as it gives me the 
opportunity of explaining some points to you. 
You are the only person who has a right to 
this, for if there ever was in this world perfect 
devoiiement, without arriere-pensee, without one 
obole kept back, like Ananias and Sapphira, 

it was yours, and yours alone. X , and 

most of those who surrounded Madame Reca- 
mier, profited by her, in a greater or lesser 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 161 

degree ; but you gave yourself wholly, and I 
admire this perfect friendship more than you 
can know. ... I refrained from defending 
that poor Benjamin Constant, on whose head 

X pours out all the vinegar of her virtue ; 

and it cost me something to do this, for I was 
very fond of him, and he was a great friend of 
M. Fauriel's. ... I was silent, also, concerning 
that parade of dukes and princes which re- 
minds one of the cards that small folk stick 
in their chimney-glasses to show off in this 
way their titled acquaintances, while they 
throw the others into the waste-paper basket. 
Why not, instead of all this, tell us about the 
last twenty years of Madame Recamier's life 
that were the most original ? Her success 
then was due solely to her character and esprit. 
Beauty and riches bring success everywhere.' ^ 

1 Madame Mohl corrects in this letter an involuntary er- 
ror of Madame Lenormant's concerning Madame Recamier's 
journal, which it may be interesting to transcribe ; the Madame 
Tastu alluded to was the author of several books much read at 
the time. ' The truth , ' says Madame Mohl, ' was this. When 
Madame Tastu was here to be operated on (for cataract), I 
read aloud to her, translating it, all that related to Madame 

11 



162 MADAME MOHL 

Madame Molil, in her narrative, describes 
Madame Recamier's admirable manner of gov- 
erning her salon and conducting the conversa- 
tion, and remarks that she was indebted for 
some of her success in this direction to Ma- 
dame de Stael, who was in the habit of saying, 
* I have not conducted the conversation well 
to-day/ or the reverse. Madame Recamier 
had not her brilliant friend's depth, Madame 
Mohl admits,^ but she describes her tact as 

Eecamier, because she could not see to read, and her friends 
could not read English to her. Well, she said to me, "It was 
I who wrote all that from what Madame Kecamier had told 
me at various times. I read it to her, and she asked me for it, 
and I gave her everything except one little narrative about the 
life of a deserter that she saved when the Queen of Naples was 
about to sign his death-warrant ; but I will give you this to 
copy." And Madame Tastu did give it to me, and I copied it ; 
but I did not insert it, so as not to have to give this explana- 
tion. If you have any doubt about it, ask Madame Lenor- 
mant to show you that portion of the manuscript, and you will 
understand how those bits came to be among her papers 
(Madame Recamier's) ; they must be in her handwriting. 
Probably Madame Lenormant knew nothing about this, but I 
mean to publish it some day.' She never did. 

1 Madame Mohl had all her life a kind of worship for the 
author of Corinne. ' I am so obliged to your husband for 
doing justice to the saint of my childhood and youth,' she 
writes to Madame Scherer, on reading a charming article in 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 163 

quite unique. ' If a mot was particularly 
happy, Madame Kecamier would take it up 
and show it to the audience, as a connoisseur 
shows a picture. If she knew an anecdote a 
propos of something, she would call on any 
one else who knew it also to relate it, though 
no one narrated better than herself. No one 
ever understood more thoroughly how to show 
off others to the best advantage ; if she was 
able to fathom their minds, she would always 
endeavor to draw up what was valuable. 
This was one of her great charms ; and as the 
spirits of the speaker were raised by his suc- 
cess, he became naturally more animated, and 
his ideas and words flowed on more rapidly.' 
Those who remember Madame Mohl in her 
own salon will recognize in the above descrip- 
tion the model that she endeavored, not un- 
successfully, to copy. 

the Temps. 'Her stupid family have absolutely hushed up 
her name from over-prudery, and little know the additions 
people have made to her weaknesses, which would be reduced 
to their due proportions if they let a little of the truth (as I 
know it) transpire.' 



164 MADAME MOHL 

Madame Mohl followed up her memoir of 
Madame Kecamier by several short sketches, 
which might more appropriately have gone 
before it. One treats of the age of chivalry 
and its effect on the character and position of 
women ; the others are devoted to some re- 
markable women of France whose salons she 
considers as the later growth of that mediaBval 
movement. Speaking of Madame de Eam- 
bouillet, she says : — 

' Of all the distinguished ladies of the seven- 
teenth century, the Marquise de Eambouillet 
deserves the first place, not only as the ear- 
liest in order of time, but because she first set 
on foot that long series of salons which for two 
hundred and fifty years has been a real in- 
stitution, known only to modern civilization. 
The general spirit of social intercourse that 
was afloat, the great improvement in the ed- 
ucation of women of the higher classes, and 
above all the taste, not to say passion, for their 
society, might have created salons ; but it is to 
Madame de Rambouillet's individual qualities 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 165 

that we owe the moral stamp given to the so- 
ciety she founded, which, in spite of all the 
inferior imitations that appeared for long 
after, remains the precedent which has always 
been unconsciously followed. Reform is in 
the course of nature, and one of its laws is a 
tendency to exaggeration in the opposite ex- 
treme from the evil that has been overcome. 
The excessive coarseness, both in writing and 
talking, that had been universal was succeeded 
by what was thought at the time overstrained 
refinement. But we should not listen to the 
accusations of some of her contemporaries 
on this head, if we could hear and know all 
that Madame de Eambouillet put an end to. 
Ideas and expressions current in palaces in 
1600 would not now be admitted into the 
porter's lodge ; and if any of us would com- 
pare the plays acted in London before the 
court of Charles II. with what would be toler- 
ated now, we should get some notion of what 
the Precieuses, at whose head Madame de 
Eambouillet stood, effected in France.' 



166 MADAME MOHL 

The opinion Madame Mohl here expresses 
of the character and mission of the salon at a 
former period tends to prove the importance 
she attached to the institution in her own day. 

The memoir of Madame Recamier has one 
merit that deserves special commendation : 
through the course of her reminiscences she 
contrives to keep herself out of sight, never 
even putting herself forward as a witness, but 
giving her testimony as that of ' a friend/ or 
' one who enjoyed Madame Recamier's inti- 
macy.' This peculiarity in her style had its 
counterpart in her character. Her German 
friends used to say that she was, for a woman, 
singularly objective. She was certainly not in 
any perceptible degree subjective. She lost 
sight of herself and of the effect she was pro- 
ducing, as few women can do, and not only 
seemed to be, but was, taken out of herself for 
the time being by whatever she was hearing. 
Her intense curiosity, always on the qui vive, 
kept her mind in perpetual motion ; she was 
always thinJcing, and very seldom thinking of 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 167 

herself. She was not the least introspective, 
as intellectual women are apt to be, nor given 
to analyzing her thoughts, or probing her feel- 
ings, or philosophizing about herself; nor was 
there a grain of morbidity in her composition, 
mental or moral, — another proof of the mas- 
culine temper of her mind. This freedom 
from self-consciousness added greatly to the 
attraction of her conversation. 

Madame d'Abbadie, in speaking to me of 
this charm in Madame Mohl, said, ' Never, in 
our long and intimate intercourse, did I ever 
detect in her the smallest attempt at effect. 
She talked as the birds sing; the witty things 
came out as the song comes from the bird. She 
loved esprit, and revelled in it as a bee does in 
honey ; all she thought of in talking to you 
was to get at your mind and enjoy it.' 

But if Madame Mohl had a talent for mak- 
ing good talkers talk their best, she had not 
the power of making the best of bad ones ; she 
had not the knack of playing on a bad instru- 
ment. No bore could have honestly paid her 



168 MADAME MOHL 

the compliment once paid to Madame Geoffrin 
by a simple old village cure, who, when she 
thanked him for the pleasant talk she had 
had with him, replied, ' Madame, I am only 
a shabby old harpsichord that your talent has 
brought some tune out of.' 

Strange to say, though everybody who 
knew Madame Mohl speaks of her witty, 
brilliant sayings, I have not been able to 
gather any specimens of them. Mr. Grant 
Duff says that her talk was always bright, 
vigorous, distinctive, and full of remarks which, 
if one had heard them repeated, one would 
have known to be Madame Mohl's ; yet not 
one of these clever remarks has remained in his 
memory. ' She never,' he says, '' said or quoted 
in my hearing anything that was really witty, 
nor did she ever seem to try to do so. She 
dealt in quaint, unexpected phrases, rather 
old-fashioned, and garnished with political 
denunciations which would, if the Emperor's 
police had extended to the salons, have landed 
her in grave difficulties.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 169 

Her racy sayings borrowed a certain flavof 
and sometimes gained in point from her 
manner of saying them. Lord Chesterfield's 
remark, that what Dr. Johnson said w^ould not 
have seemed half so good if it had not been 
for his bow-w^ow way of saying it, might have 
applied to her. She had a little bow-wow way 
of her own that was very effective, and often 
gave piquancy to what from another would 
have passed unnoticed as a commonplace. 
Her French was exquisite. M. de Tocque- 
ville, a good judge, said he did not know a 
Frenchwoman who spoke it with the same 
perfection. Ampere, as we have seen, bore 
a similar testimony to her proficiency in his 
native tongue in her younger days. She 
handled it wdth a spirit and skill that bore the 
stamp of her own originality; and the fact of 
her being a foreigner, while it gave her the 
command of two languages, gave her also a 
special license for taking liberties with her 
adopted one. She used her license freely and 
with consummate art, though sometimes in 



170 MADAME MOHL 

defiance of law and precedent. She never 
stopped at such trifles as grammar, for instance, 
but proceeded boldly on the principle that it 
is the part of genius to know when to break 
rules. If a neuter verb served her purpose 
better than an active one, she would use the 
neuter, though it made the hair of the Forty 
Immortals stand on end ; but the most rigorous 
puriste among them would never have counted 
the sin against her, so obviously did it carry 
its own excuse by adding to the force and 
clearness of her sentence. Her speech was as 
limpid as crystal. Madame d'Abbadie beauti- 
fully describes it in the remark, ' Elle avait la 
parole ailee.' 

Her English was very pure, but not so 
graceful and rich as her French ; she wrote 
it with correct grace, but there is something 
in the style that reminds one of a foreigner. 
Her memoir of Madame Recamier is charming, 
yet it reads rather like the writing of a French 
pen dipped in an EngUsh ink-bottle ; a little 
stiff, as of a modern lady carefully picking her 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 171 

steps in the high-heeled shoes and unyielding 
brocade of an ancestress. But characteristic 
as her book is, it is rather for her salon, her 
skill in bringing people together, and making 
a link between English and French society," 
that she is likely to be remembered. Her real 
book was her Friday evening ; and she knew 
this. There is a current tradition of her 
saying that she hoped to die on a Saturday 
in order that she might have one Friday 
more. 

Madame Mohl was variously judged. The 
majority of those who knew her spoke of her 
as ^ that delightful old lady ; ' while not a 
few called her Hhat detestable old woman.' 
Both verdicts were just. She was delightful 
or detestable as the spirit moved her ; and 
she was at times moved by a wicked spirit, a 
mischievous sort of Puck, who took possession 
of her now and then, and impelled her to say 
and do the rudest and most disagreeable things 
without any motive or provocation. For in- 
stance, one Friday evening, Madame Bistori 



172 MADAME MOHL 

was at the Rue du Bac ; several distinguished 
members of the Itahan colonj in Paris, know- 
ing that she was to be there, went to meet 
her — among others, Montanelli, who had writ- 
ten ' Camma ' expressly for the great actress. 
Conversation was going on pleasantly, when 
suddenly a propos of some remark about Italy, 
Madame Mohl exclaimed, ^ Tous les Italiens, 
e'est de la canaille ! ' This astounding senti- 
ment, delivered in her high, sharp tones, with 
her little head well thrown back, produced the 
effect of a pistol-shot on the company. Ma- 
dame Ristori rose to the defence, and intoned 
the apologia of her countrymen with an elo- 
quence of patriotism that moved every one 
present ; then, with the majesty of Melpomene 
in person, she took leave of Madame Mohl, all 
the Italians forming an escort to her as she 
swept from the room. The incident was the 
talk of Paris for some days, and Madame 
Mohl's best friends gave her small quarter for 
her extraordinary behavior. What induced 
her to make so rude and unprovoked a speech. 



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HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 173 

Heaven only knows. She herself could have 
given no reason for it ; but it was extremely 
characteristic of her wilful, impulsive nature. 
She had no desire to vex, far less to insult, 
Madame Ristori, whom she admired intensely 
both as a woman and an artist. But she dis- 
liked Italians as a race ; something that was 
said prompted her to say so, and to check 
an impulse no more occurred to her than to 
stop herself from sneezing or coughing, if she 
wanted to do either. 

The following note, written to Ampere 
(in Rome) some years before the above in- 
cident, proves how warm Madame Mohl's 
personal regard was for the great Italian 
artist : — 

^Do you know Madame Ristori? No? 
Then I send you a line of introduction to her. 
Please to speak well of me to her. If you 
know her already, speak well of me all the 
same. You say you don't want to make her 
acquaintance ? You are wrong. She is 
charming, quite apart from her talent. And 



174 MADAME MOHL 

she loves the French ! I entreat you to go 
and see her.' 

Thought and speech were simultaneous with 
Madame Mohl. One did not precede and dic- 
tate the other, as it is supposed to do with 
the most inconsiderate of us ; they escaped to- 
gether. When Mrs. Wynne Finch remarked 
to her that this peculiarity accounted for 
her often giving offence without intending it, 
Madame Mohl seemed very much surprised ; 
and after a moment's reflection, ' My dear/ 
she said, ^ why do I speak and think at one 
and the same moment, instead of thinking 
first and then speaking, like other people ?' 

What answer could her friend make except, 
' Because you are Madame Mohl, and not like 
other people ' ? 

^ My aunt stood no nonsense from anybody,' 
says M. Ottmar von Mohl, her nephew and 
devoted admirer ; ' this was one of her many 
attractions. Rank and wealth went for noth- 
ing with her ; if the people were not clever 
or sensible, they got no quarter. "I gave 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 175 

him a piece of my mind ! " was a favorite ex- 
pression of hers, and it was not pleasant to 
get a piece of her mind.' 

Even genius did not escape getting a piece 
of her mind when she felt inclined to give it. 
On one occasion there was a sharp passage of 
arms between her and Ivan TourgueniefF. The 
great Russian novelist was eulogizing the 
character of Peter the Great, in whom he dis- 
cerned the promise of a new dawn, a new 
world for Russia, while Madame Mohl could 
only see the savage whose barbarism revolted 
her. ' Ah, well,' said Tourguenieff at last, ' I 
much prefer a sick man to a healthy co' ! ' 
He meant cow, but the company were puzzled 
till this was explained. 

Madame Mohl has been accused of being a 
lion-hunter. It is not true, at least in the 
vulgar sense of the word : she was never 
caught by lions of the hour, by sham celebri- 
ties ; but it is true that she courted real ones, 
men whose fame rested on a solid foundation 
of genius or achievement. She cultivated her 



176 MADAME MOHL 

salon, and songht attractive elements for it, 
as other amateurs hunt after rare orchids, or 
gems, or aBsthetic teapots; it was her great 
interest in life, and her ambition was to keep 
it ornamented and replenished with all that 
was interesting and distinguished. This love 
of celebrities, however, was untainted by the 
least touch of snobbishness. It was said to 
me by a cosmopolitan Englishwoman, herself 
a queen of society, ^ Madame Mohl was the 
only Englishwoman I ever knew, in any rank, 
who was absolutely free from vulgarity.' This 
judgment, if it bear too severely on the rest 
of her countrywomen, was undoubtedly just, 
as a testimony to Madame Mohl. Once, Miss 
Gaskell ^ tells me, Madame Mohl was warmly 
praising some lady whom she had just met, 
when another lady said in that peculiar English 
■^ who 's who ' tone, '^ Let me see, — who was 
Mrs. So-and-so before her marriage ? ' Ma- 
dame Mohl turned sharply on her with, ' Oh, 
I don't bother my head about odd bodies' 

^ Daughter o£ the distinguished authoress. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 177 

was-es ! ' She had no ill will, either political or 
philosophical, towards money or rank ; but 
they did not impress her in the smallest degree. 
No titles, no splendor of external accessories, 
none of those false gods to which the vidgar 
herd bow down, got one iota of reverence 
from her. Carlyle himself did not hold gig- 
manity in greater contempt than did Madame 
Mohl. Worldly possessions did not in her eyes 
add one tittle of importance to any man or 
woman, nor did the total want of them lessen 
any one an iota in her consideration. 

This entire un worldly-minded ness was a 
power, as well as a charm ; for there are few 
things the world admires more than contempt 
of itself, its maxims and its shams, and none 
command its esteem more than those who 
despise it. But courage was an element of 
power that Madame Mohl did not lack in any 
direction. She was so bold and vehement in 
her speech that her language often sounded 
exaggerated, and yet it was always the sin- 
cere expression of her feelings or opinions at 

12 



178 MADAME MOHL 

the moment. Whatever she thought or felt, 
she said it with a boldness that never stopped 
to consider effect or consequences. Nothing 
annoyed her more than for her friends, the 
few intimes in whom she felt a sort of propri- 
etorship, to go away from Paris and leave 
her behind them. Once Mrs. Wynne Finch 
was going to London, in May, as was her cus- 
tom ; and knowing the storm this early de- 
parture was sure to raise, she postponed the 
announcement of it to the last day. The old 
lady took the tidings very peaceably, and said 
good-by without any bad language ; but when 
Mrs. Wynne Finch was going down the stairs, 
she put her head over the rails, and cried out 
after her, ' May God in heaven forgive me ! 
but I wish your house in London was burnt 
down, and all your children dead, except Guy ; 
for then you would have to stay in Paris ! ' 

When an old woman, she loved her friends 
with the warmth of a young girl ; her heart 
retained its glow to the last. This capacity 
for affection, combined with her passion for 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 179 

esprit, accounts in «i measure for that content- 
ment and sense of happiness that Madame 
Mohl enjoyed to the close of her long life. 
Her childhood and youth had been warmed 
by the tender affection of a mother whom she 
idolized, and her maturer life was amply satis- 
fied by the affection of a husband whom she 
in turn loved with the deepest tenderness. 
These two supreme affections, supplemented 
by a number of very strong friendships, 
sufficed to keep her heart Avell warmed, and 
to prevent her love of espiit from freezing 
into intellectual egotism. They protected her 
from that deadly ennui that hung like a blight 
on the lives of many of her far more brilliant 
predecessors. Madame Mohl saw few flaws in 
her friends when they were alive, and none at 
all when they were dead ; she mourned for 
them with a passionate grief that was very 
touching and quite sincere in its exaggeration, 
and she took their sorrow to heart as her own. 
When a heavy bereavement befell Ampere, 
she wrote to him : — 



180 MADAME MOHL 

* I have a big room, very comfortable : 
come and stay with us. You will have your 
old friend M. Mohl to look after you. What 
can you do all by yourself in these cruel days ? 
Come to us. I can't write for the tears that 
blind me. I promise you that you will be 
better here than anywhere. I am so unhappy, 
— so unhappy ! ' 

The writing is all awry, and the words are 
blurred and blotted with tears. Ampere did 
not accept the invitation so lovingly made : he 
said that for the present he felt the absolute 
need of being alone. 

' Yes/ wrote Madame Mohl again, '^ I can 
understand this need for solitude. All I can 
say is that when you like to come, your room 
is readj^ for you, with a splendid view. You 
will be perfectly free, and have no thought to 
give to material cares, which are in themselves 
a torment. You shall be alone as much as 
you like. I can't tell you the longing I have 
to be of use to you. For I loved her more 
than I ever knew, or she either.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 181 

On the death of another friend, she writes 
to Madame Scherer : — 

* I am sure you will feel for me when I tell 
you that I have lost my dear Mrs. Gaskell, 
the best friend I had in England, perhaps 
anywhere. I learnt it this morning from her 
poor daughter. She seemed perfectly well, 
and was talking, when her head suddenly 
lowered, and life fled.^ It must have been 
heart complaint. To say what I have lost 
would be impossible. My spirits are so low 
that, as you are so kind as to speak of my 
nieces' visit to Versailles, I will profit by your 
kind memory to send them on Friday, if the 
weather is good. I don't say fine ; that may 
not be expected. I am glad to send them 
somewhere without me. I had promised to 
take them out to-night ; but I could not. I can 
take them to the Flute Enchantee Thursday, 
as I need not speak there ; and I had taken 
the places, and can't bear to disappoint them. 
I had rather sit and mope than anything; 

1 Novembev, 1865. 



182 MADAME MOHL 

but it's hard upon them, who live at their own 
homes as in a nunnery, and youth has as good 
a right to pleasure as childhood has to play. 

* Oh, dear ! my heart feels like a lump of 
lead in me. If you had known what a heart 
8he had ! But no one did.' 

One who gave so much had a right to 
expect a good deal in return ; and she got it, 
and enjoyed it. She was a singularly happy 
person, and her happiness expressed itself in 
an inexhaustible flow of high spirits. She 
looked happy. Her round blue eyes were 
wide open in a perpetual sparkle of curiosity 
and interest ; her little turned-up nose, spirited 
and commanding, seemed to be scenting clever 
moU in the air ; her mouth, like a bent bow, 
was incessantly shooting out bright arrows of 
wit ; her upright figure, the pose of her head, 
her quick step, her whole air and deportment, 
expressed energy, vivacity, and happiness. 
And what a charm there is in the mere sight 
of a happy human face amidst the suffering, 
discontented ones that meet us on all sides ! 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 183 

Madame Mohl's utter absence of coquetry 
was another characteristic which justified her 
German friend's remark that she was more 
like a man than a woman. She was as free 
from personal vanity as an infant. Sometimes, 
when calHng at fine houses for the first time, 
she was mistaken by the servants for a poor 
woman come to ask for something. These 
mistakes, far from offending, amused her ex- 
ceedingly, and she used to relate them with 
great glee to her friends. She retained to her 
ninety-third year the fashion of her youth of 
having her dress cut open in the front, and 
of wearing little curls all over her forehead. 
This head-gear had never in her j^oungest days 
been a pattern of neatness, but in later years 
it had degenerated into the wildest tangle. 
M. Guizot used to say that Madame Mohl and 
his little Scotch terrier had the same coiffeur, 
for they both wore their hair in the same style. 
She suggested the same comparison to many. 
* Never,' says Mrs. Prestwich, * shall I forget 
my first sight of her, her fuzz of curls hung 



184 MADAME MOHL 

down over her eyes, making her look exactly 
like a sagacious little Skye terrier that had 
been out in a gale of wind.' ' That highly 
intelligent, vigorous Skye terrier/ Mr. Grant 
Duff calls her. 

Madame Mohl never committed the extrav- 
agance of buying proper curl-paper, but took 
any odds and ends of colored circulars, notes, 
newspapers, etc., that came to hand ; and the 
result was a Medusa-like head, bristling all 
over with little snakes of divers colors. She 
would present herself thus adorned before any 
visitor who chanced to call before the snakes 
were uncoiled. The effect was startling on 
some persons ; but she was always serenely 
unconscious of this, or seemed to be so. 

A young Englishman whose love of science 
endeared him to M. Mohl, and who had a 
warm place in Madame Mohl's affections, was 
often favored by this striking apparition. ' She 
would come out in wonderful get-ups,' says 
Mr. G. L., — 'a skirt of one color and a jacket 
of another, with a shabby night-cap stuck on 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 185 

the top of a bnsh of curl-jDapers ; altogether 
the most amazing figure that ever you beheld 
out of a pantomime.' But as this shrewd sci- 
entist remarks, ^ there was a kind of coquetry 
in this defiance of coquetry.' Englishmen and 
Germans were amused by these eccentricities ; 
but Frenchmen, although they overlooked 
them on the score of her nationality, never 
quite forgave Madame Mohl for being some- 
thing of a caricature. 

Madame Ozanam ^ relates that one evening 
at a ball at the Hotel de Ville, she saw M. de 
Lomenie approaching, with a figure 'like a 
mad witch ' leaning on his arm ; on nearer 
view, the figure proved to be a lady in a short 
skirt, her hair tangled out to a wild nimbus 
round her head and stuck all over with long 
straws, as if it had been rolled on a stable 
floor. As this astounding apparition drew 
closer, Madame Ozanam recognized Madame 
Mohl. Presently, M. de Lomenie, having 
handed over his charge to some other brave 

^ Widow of the celebrated Frederic Ozanam. 



186 MADAME MOHL 

man, came to speak to Madame Ozanam, who 
said lauo^hino'ly, ' I cong-ratulate vou on the 
act of courage you have just performed.' 
* Yes, you well may ! ' replied M. de Lomenie ; 
and then he added uneasily, ' But there is no 
mistaking her? One sees at a glance that 
she is English ? ' 

On another occasion, at the Salle Erard, 
while the audience were waiting^ for the ar- 
tists to come in, a door on the platform opened, 
and a short-skirted, Avitch-like figure appeared, 
and stood a moment surveying the assembly. 
There was a general laugh in the crowded 
concert-hall ; but Madame Mohl looked slowly 
round her, and with perfect composure walked 
to her seat. 

In strange contradiction with this disregard 
of her personal appearance was her sensitive- 
ness on the subject of her age. She could 
not bear to have it mentioned, and was al- 
w'ays on the qui vive to conceal it. Merimee, 
M. Mold's temoin at their marriage, used to tell 
a story of her answering the mayor, when he 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 187 

asked her age, ' Monsieur, that is no business 
of yours ; and if it v/ere, I would jump out 
of the window sooner than tell you ! ' Sixty- 
eight seemed to be the period beyond which, 
to the last, she never owned that she had 
passed, and it was very amusing to see how 
cleverly she kept to this date. Her friends 
would sometimes maliciously try to entrap her 
into betraying her age, but they never suc- 
ceeded. One of them tells me that he never 
knew her to fail to make the subtraction in- 
stantly and correctly. For instance, if he said, 
* Why, dear Madame Mohl, that was fifty years 
ago ! ' she would reply, ' Yes, so it was ; I was 
just eighteen at the time ; ' or, ' Why, it must 
be sixty years since that happened ! ' ' Yes, I 
remember I was then a child eight years old.' 

There was no surer way of provoking her 
anger than by alluding, even inferentially, to 
her real age. Count Walsh, when he met 
her for the first time as Madame Mohl, said 
to her, '■ Madame, as we are both of us very 
old, perhaps you could tell me something of a 



188 MADAME MOHL 

compatriot of yours, to whose house I was 
taken some fifty odd years ago by Thiers. 
She was a Miss Clarke, one of the most charm- 
ing persons I ever met.' The dear old lady 
blushed like a girl, painfully divided between 
the pleasure of being so flatteringly remem- 
bered and the vexation of having her age 
thus brought home to her. 

Madame Mohl had an old friend, Mademoi- 
selle Josephine R , who was a great trial 

to her in this respect. The two old ladies had 
been children together, and had painted to- 
gether at the Louvre, and studied at the same 
ateliers ; but Mademoiselle Josephine, far from 
being ashamed of her age, took a proper pride 
in it, and was apt to boast of having seen 
Robespierre. She would call out to Madame 
Mohl in her deep guttural voice, * You remem- 
ber, my dear, we were painting such a picture 
during the Hundred Days ! ' or ^ Do you re- 
member the day we went to see the flowers 
at Malmaison while the Empress Josephine 
was there ? ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 189 

These terrible ' do-you-remembers ' used to 
make Madame Mohl perfectly furious. * Jose- 
phine radote ! vous sentez bien qu'elle ra- 
dote ! ' she would say in an angry mtto voce to 
the company. 

Not long before his death Thiers met her 
at the house of a friend, and reminded her 
that they had not met since 1836, just forty 
years before. She was exceedingly annoyed, 
and when the old statesman was gone she said 
to her hostess, '■ The old fool is off his head ; 
he doesn't know what he is talking about ; 
he has made a mistake of twenty years ! ' 

Madame Mohl preserved into advanced age, 
after the w^ear and tear of life, much of the 
delicacy that is apt to get rubbed off with 
years. Slie could not tolerate anything that 
sinned against good taste, either in books or 
conversation. Nothino: affronted her like hav- 
ing her age made a pretext for reading or 
hearing; what was in itself offensive. 

One evening; she arrived at Madame de 
Montalembert's in high dudgeon *^ Fancy,' 



190 MADAME MOHL 

she exclaimed, on entering the salon, * fancy 

M. sending me a box for La Belle 

Helene, and saying that it is not a play fit 
for a young woman to go to, but that at my 
age that does not matter ! Such impudence ! 
As if I wanted to go to a play that a decent 
young woman could n't see ! I hated inde- 
cencies when I was young, and I hate them 
still more now. I sent him back his box, and 
gave him a piece of my mind.' 

When mere coarseness of language was 
redeemed by wit or genuine talent, she was 
willing to overlook it. She would, for in- 
stance, read with pleasure French writers of 
the seventeenth century, or the English of 
the Elizabethan period, whose broad style 
contained true humor or philosophy ; but 
nothing could induce her to open the sick- 
ening French novels that she heard discussed 
by ^ decent men and women ' around her. 

M. Scherer wrote an article in the Temps 
on Eabelais that delighted her, and she wrote 
at once to his wife : '- Rabelais is a chefd'oeiivre ! 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 191 

And what a benefactor to find out the valu- 
able jewel in such a mass of filth! I wish 
M. Scherer would publish a little book about 
Rabelais to show ladies the moral beauties re- 
claimed out of the dirt, for none will have 
the stomach to hunt for them. No doubt the 
century may have half the blame. I tried 
once, but left off at the second page, and had 
no idea of what I lost. He is the contrary 
of Swift, who is a cynic to the backbone, with 
no tenderness in his nature ; yet he is read 
ten times more, merely because he had the 
luck to be born later.' 

Her feminine weakness about hidins- her 
age was perhaps the only foolish trait of that 
essential youthfulness that Madame Mohl re- 
tained to the end. An incapacity for growing 
old sometimes includes an incapacity for grow- 
ing wise, for growing in many things that 
should keep pace with the advance of years ; 
but if, while these autumnal growths progress, 
the green springtide of youth remains unfaded, 
then the charm of the combination is perfect. 



192 MADAME MOHL 

Madame Mohl possessed it in a singular degree. 
She had a spice of romance in her that kept 
its flavor to the end. Edgar Quinet had been, 
as we have seen, an admirer of hers in the old 
Abbaj^e days, and some letters of a tender 
character had passed between them. After 
Quinet's death, his widow asked a friend to 
get these back from Madame Mohl ; and this 
friend was highly amused at the shyness of 
the old lady, then past ninety, when the sub- 
ject was broached to her. ^ She finessed 
about it,' he says, '^ and was as conscious as 
a young girl might have been.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 193 



CHAPTER IV. 

It is curious that Madame Mohl's salon should 
have attained such notoriety and become such 
a distinguished intellectual centre without 
having had any particular ideas or crotchets, 
religious, political or literary, to propagate. 
It differed in this, as in so many other i;iotable 
points, from the salons of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, which, one and all, were tribunes or 
schools, leading, or trying to lead, the intel- 
lectual movement of the day. Indeed, this 
pretension did not vanish with the century. 
From Madame de Rambouillet down even to 
Madame du Cayla, there was a canape, doctri- 
naire, on which the lady of the house sat : one 
while legislating with the/>^fmf6sand deciding 
the gender of a noun ; another while' making 

13 



194 MADAME MOHL 

philosophy ' with the encyclopaedists^ playing 
at diplomacy, giving an impulse to religion 
or unbelief, directing the political current to- 
wards revolution or restoration. No such vex- 
ing problems or ambitious aims troubled the 
tenor of Madame Mohl's pleasant way. She 
had no doctrines of any sort to preach. Opin- 
ions she had, and she ' stuck to them ' like 
grim death, but she never attempted to force 
them on others. All her friends render this 
testimony to her. 

The Due de Broglie, than whom there are 
few more experienced and competent judges 
on the point, gives me the following sympa- 
thetic appreciation of Madame Mohl and her 
salon : ' It presented a most original character; 
one which, I fear, no other will ever rej^roduce. 
If she succeeded in bringing together without 
collision, and even without gene, persons who 
did not habitually seek one another, and that 
nothing drew naturally together, it was no 
doubt because she did not attempt to impose 
any systematic opinions on them. I don't 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 195 

believe that her mind had formed any defi- 
nite ideas on any subject ; but her true in- 
stincts and generous sentiments, expressed 
in a most piquant manner, gave to her con- 
versation, whatever turn it took, a charm 
peculiarly her own. What might have 
wounded, coming from another, pleased and 
amused in her. Her extreme kindliness, her 
total absence of pretension, a forgetfulness of 
herself that was visible even in the neglect of 
her personal appearance, made it impossible to 
take amiss anything she said. It is exceed- 
ingly difficult to appreciate Madame Mohl's 
peculiar kind of merit without having known 
her, and it is still more difficult to describe 
it.' 

The foreign element which formed a dis- 
tinct attraction in this interesting salon was 
one of the conspicuous reasons for its being 
regarded as neutral ground, where enemies 
met under a flag of truce. Frenchmen whom, 
as the Due de Broglie observes, nothing drew 
naturally together, and who would never have 



196 MADAME MOHL 

gone to meet one another, went without 
scruple or reluctance to meet Tourguenieff, 
Eanke, Dean Stanley, and other remarkable 
men of various nationalities. 

Dean Stanley was Madame Mohl's chief 
friend in England. They first met in a thun- 
derstorm on the Lake of Como, where M. 
and Madame Mohl were visiting the Marquise 
d'Arconati. The Dean and Mrs. Stanley, his 
mother, sought refuge at the hospitable Ital- 
ian villa, and were there introduced to the 
Mohls. Madame Mohl used to say that it 
was a case of love at first sight between her 
and the Dean. It was a faithful love on both 
sides, at any rate. Later, Mrs. Stanley was 
passing through Paris, and wrote to a friend, 
inviting her to come and spend the evening, 
* to meet ' — - so ran the note — ^ a most amus- 
ing woman, whom I am going to trot out 
this season in London.' This amusing woman 
was Madame Mohl, and on this occasion she 
fully justified the designation. M. de Tocque- 
ville, an old friend of hers, was there, and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 197 

these two kept up a fire of wit and repar- 
tee that was almost bewildering from its 
brilliancy. 

In the year 1856, as far as I can ascertain, 
Madame Mohl went to London, on her first 
visit to the Stanleys. The ^trotting out' 
proved a great success. The popularity of the 
chaperon and the position her family occu- 
pied in London society must have secured a 
gracious reception to any one she presented ; 
but this in itself would not have made Ma- 
dame Mohl personally popular, nor created 
for her the warm and admiring friends whom 
she then gained, and ever afterwards kept, in 
the Stanleys' circle. 

Some years later,^ Madame Mohl had the 
good fortune to be the medium of a service 
to the Dean which, as he was ever ready to 
remind her, made the happiness of his life. 

Lady Elgin had been a very dear friend of 
Mary Clarke's, in olden times, and Madame 
Mohl continued this friendship towards her 

1 In 1863. 



198 MADAME MOHL 

daughters, whom she regarded with a sort 
of maternal affection. Lady Augusta Bruce 
was her special favorite, and used to stay 
with her often in Paris. Dean Stanley met 
Lady Augusta for the first time at dinner at 
the Rue du Bac, and was so charmed with 
her that he said afterward, ' If I were in a 
mind to marry, I have seen the woman that 
would suit me.' This meeting was not the 
result of any sinister design against the Dean's 
peace of heart on Madame Mohl's side ; but 
she was as proud of the sequel as if she had 
plotted and planned to bring it about. She 
always spoke of the marriage as having been 
made by her; but, in truth, the marriage 
made itself, growing naturally out of that 
first meeting. Both the Dean and Lady Au- 
gusta were, however, quite willing to let her 
take the glory of it, and always said they 
owed their happiness to her. This marriage 
strengthened the friendship between them ; 
and henceforth a month's visit at the Deanery 
was a yearly episode that Madame Mohl and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 199 

they looked forward to with enjoyment. She 
soon became the deHght of the eclectic circle 
that centred in the hospitable cloisters of 
Westminster. ' Madame Mohl was so amus- 
ing and original/ says one of Lady Augusta's 
old friends, ' her sayings w^ere so good and 
her ways so funny, that she was a constant 
source of entertainment to us all, and we 
looked forward to her coming every year 
with impatience.' 

Madame Mohl was fond of relating an 
incident that occurred during one of her 
visits to the Deanery. It was at the time 
when there was great apprehension of a w\ar 
breaking out between England and Germany 
on account of the Danish question. Madame 
Mohl was sitting in the drawing-room, one 
morning, reading the Times, which contained 
the good news that this apprehension was 
at an end. The leader enlarging upon this 
termination of public anxiety put her in high 
good-humor, and just as she had finished it 
the door was thrown open and the servant 



200 MADAME MOHL 

announced ^ The Queen ! ' An ordinary mor- 
tal would have been a little fluttered by this 
unexpected presence ; but Madame Mohl 
stood up, and exclaimed triumphantly, ' Well, 
your Majesty, we are to have no war ! ' 

* No, thank God ! we are to have no war ! ' 
was the Queen's hearty rejoinder, and holding 
out both hands, she sat down beside Madame 
Mohl, and entered into conversation. 

Lady Augusta, meantime, who was dress- 
ing, hurried with her toilet, rather anxious as 
to how Madame Mohl would behave to the 
Sovereign. She found them both chatting 
away in the most friendly manner, the old 
lady giving her opinion on the politics of 
Europe as freely as if her companion had been 
a mere fellow-creature. Unfortunately, we do 
not know what impression Madame Mohl pro- 
duced on the Queen, but no one was left in 
ignorance of the impression her Majesty pro- 
duced on Madame Mohl. She always spoke 
of her as ^ that dear woman, the Queen.' If 
she had not found the Queen a dear woman 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 201 

she would not have said it. She was ex- 
tremely loyal, but her incapacity for being 
influenced by mere rank would have made it 
simply impossible for her to recognize in the 
crowned Majesty of England anything but a 
woman, when it came to meeting her mind to 
mind and talking to her. Not all the virtue 
of all the martyrs, nor all the blood of all the 
Howards, could have propitiated her into 
liking any one who lacked esjprit and a cer- 
tain charm. If she had not found these in 
the sovereign, she would have relegated 
her among other less exalted personages, of 
whom she said, ^ Excellent, my dear, I have 
no doubt — excellent J but I never want to 
see them again.' She often wished to see the 
Queen again. 

Mrs. Ritchie i^nee Thackeray) tells me of an- 
other meeting with royalty at the Deanery: 
' Prince Leopold, then a boy, was brought in 
to be introduced to Madame Mohl. Most of 
the people present were bowing and scraping, 
but she put out her hand, and said, " I am an 



202 MADAME MOHL 

old woman, my dear, so I can't get up, but I 
am very glad to know you ; " and she went 
on talking to him most charmingly.' 

There was no want of respect in this sans 
gene, as the young prince apparently under- 
stood. Nobody ever took offence at her odd 
ways; and they were sometimes exceedingly 
odd. ' I remember,' Mrs. Ritchie relates, 
^ two of my cousins going to see her in Paris, 
and on coming back describing her as sitting 
like a little old fairy on the mantel-piece of 
her drawing-room chimney, and entertaining 
them quite composedly.' She never sat on 
the mantel-piece at the Deanery, though she 
was as much at home there as in any house 
but her own. 

The Stanleys generally paid the Mohls a 
little visit every year at the Rue du Bac, oc- 
cupying that upper room, above their hosts' 
own apartment, which was placed so con- 
stantly at the disposal of English friends. 
Lady Augusta was extremely popular in 
French society ; few Englishwomen were ever 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 203 

more so. Those who knew her at the Rue 
du Bac still speak of her with kindly warmth : 
'Lady Augusta Stanley, la plus aimable des 
femmes, la grace et la bonte memes.' 

The Stanleys' last visit to the Mohls was 
in 1875, when Lady Augusta fell ill, and was 
detained two months under their roof. Ma- 
dame Mohl was too inexperienced a nurse to 
be very helpful in a sick-room, and her ex- 
citability and outspoken dismay at this pro- 
longed illness in the house were misleading 
to many who did not know how to discount 
her exaggerated manner of expressing herself 
under strong feeling of any kind. But Dean 
Stanley always took the right measure of it, 
and ever retained the liveliest sense of grati- 
tude for her genuine affection and kindness 
during that trying time. He used to relate 
with great humor how, one day, as the doc- 
tor was going down from Lady Augusta, 
Madame Mohl ran out and called after him : 
'Doctor, if you have anything to say, mind 
you say it to me ; it is no use telling the 



204 MADAME MOHL 

Dean, for the Dean is a fool!' Both he and 
Lady Augusta laughed heartily over this 
characteristic testimony of Madame Mohl to 
his practical intelligence. 

It was said of Madame Mohl that she was 
more popular in England than in France. 
She certainly was more consistently amiable 
there. Her friends used to say that she was 
on her best behavior in England. There is 
no doubt that, though she admired and en- 
joyed so many things essential to French life 
and character, she loved England and the 
English best. She took no account of na- 
tionality in her friends, but, as a people, 
the English had the first place in her heart. 
The Germans she admired and respected in- 
dividually, rather than liked as a nation. 

M. Jules Simon, in giving me some in- 
teresting recollections of Madame Mohl, 
says : — 

^Speaking one day of the three nations 
and their characteristics, she said to me that 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 205 

she had learned very quickly to discern a 
gentleman wi homme distingue, in France or 
in England ; she never made a mistake, but 
recognized one at a glance ; whereas the dis- 
tinguishing lines long escaped her with re- 
gard to Germans, and even after long habit 
and observation it sometimes happened that 
she made mistakes.' 

It was a notion of Madame Mohl's that 
one should take the predominant point in the 
national character, and use it as a handle in 
dealing with the people. Once in a London 
drawing-room I heard her deliver herself of 
the following sentiments, apropos of the race 
of cabmen : * In London, I always appeal to 
their sense of duty ; that is the best pump- 
handle to take hold of in this country. In 
Paris, I flatter the cocher de fiacre ; you must 
always flatter that class in France, if you 
do not want them to be insolent. Vanity 
is the predominant characteristic of the 
French, and that is what you must work 
with.' 



206 MADAME MOHL 

A trait that she dearly appreciated in 
English character was the prevailing kindness 
to animals. She was very tender-hearted to 
our dumb fellow-servants, and this feeling was 
a source of constant distress to her in Paris, 
where, in spite of the improvement which of 
late years has taken place in the relations 
between man and his beast, the sight of 
carters goading and beating the patient 
horses, that strain and pant under heavy 
loads, is still too often seen. She loved people 
who loved animals. ^Do, pray,' she writes 
to Madame Scherer, ^ find out who wrote the 
article in the Temps (January 19, 1869) about 
the dog, and also about the cat, and tell me, 
that I may love him by his name. I think it 
must be the same who often writes about 
animals. Mr. Mohl and I have a great ten- 
dresse for him.' 

She never took a cab when she could 
possibly avoid it, it so distressed her to see 
the cabmen (in Paris) beating their horses ; 
but she always drove in omnibuses with 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 207 

satisfaction, because * those dear men never 
beat their animals.' Madame Mohl was one 
of the early members of the Victoria Street 
Society for the protection of animals, and her 
name v/as one of the first on the list when 
the Anti-Vivisection Society was established 
in Paris. 

The only household pet she ever had was 
a large Persian cat. Pussy was an important 
member of the family. She had her supper 
every evening in the drawing-room, but 
sometimes on Friday evenings she was for- 
gotten, or kept waiting ; she would then take 
it, uninvited, out of the milk-jug. One 
evening a lady, who was not accustomed to 
the ways of the house, exclaimed to M. Mohl, 
' Oh, see ! The 'cat is lapping up the milk ! ' 
'Yes, she is making a good little supper,' 
said the kindly old savant complacently ; and 
he went on with the conversation. 

Homely and comical touches like these — 
the cat free of the tea-tray, the kettle boiling 
on the hearth — contributed, no doubt, to 



208 MADAME MOHL 

invest Madame Mohl's salon with that original 
character which the Due de Broglie fears we 
shall never see reproduced in any other. The 
humorous eccentricity that reigned there, 
while adding in one way to the charm which 
made itself felt by all, young and old, the 
grand seigneur and the student, perhaps ex- 
plains also why this brilliant centre was said 
never to ' inspire ' those who frequented it. 
Undoubtedly it did not. Madame Mohl did 
not aim at inspiring people. The clever men 
who enjoyed her conversation did not carry 
away from it a speech ready made for Par- 
liament, or the material for a new book, or a 
stinging pamphlet, as they used to do from 
Madame de Stael, for instance. Madame 
Mohl wrought none of these wonders. Hers 
was not the electric touch that stirred to 
utterance what was deepest and best in others. 
People did not go to her for inspiration, as 
they did to the author of ' Corinne,' nor to 
have their wounds bound up and the elixir 
of life poured out to them, as they did to 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 209 

Madame Swetchine ; they went simply to be 
amused and delighted, and in this they were 
seldom disappointed. Madame Mohl gave 
them what they came for, and sent them away 
pleased with the consciousness of having been 
seen at their best, and of having thoroughly 
enjoyed themselves^ — that expressive phrase 
which is so strangely misapplied in its gen- 
eral use. 

Yet, though she never imposed her opin- 
ions, it would not be quite true to say that 
she never tried to exert influence. There was 
one select province where she did strive, and 
very vigorously, to exercise it. This was the 
Academy. Every election to a vacant chair 
among the Forty was the signal for a gene- 
ral moving of the forces in the Rue du Bac. 
Many a droll story might be told of these 
recurring contests. 

When the fievre verte, the longing to get 
into the green coat of the Immortals, seized 
upon any of her friends, Madame Mohl was 
among the first to detect symptoms of the 

14 



210 MADAME MOHL 

malady, and, if the case looked hopeful, no 
one was more zealous m promoting the cure. 
But this was a critical time for the rest of her 
friends. They were, of course, expected to 
favor her candidate, and it required no mean 
skill to shirk doing this and to avoid quarrel- 
ling with her. Even so able a diplomatist as 
Guizot sometimes found it difficult to perform 
the feat. He was, however, peculiarly cir- 
cumstanced. Among his dearest friends was 
a lady who also took a lively interest in 
academical elections, and whose salon, though 
less prominent and cosmopolitan than Madame 
Mohl's, was in its special way a charming 
and distinguished centre. It seemed a law 
of nature, so regularly did the coincidence 
present itself that these two ladies protected 
rival candidates. M. Guizot could not side 
with both, and the diplomatic skill he dis- 
played in navigating between the Scylla and 
Charybdis of these stormy waters was a 
source of boundless admiration to those who 
were looking on at the match. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 211 

The following letter to Ampere shows 
what an active canvasser Madame Mohl was, 
and how expert in pulling the wires of the 
academical coterie. 

'April 5, 1859. 

* I dined yesterday at the Princess 
Belgiojoso's, and M. Mignet was quite beside 
himself on account of a nomination to his 
Academy. M. Baude, who was free/ gave in 
his resignation in order to become a candidate. 
Mignet, if he did not exhort him to do it, at 
least approved and egged him on. They had 
the promise of twenty-five votes, when lo and 
behold ! a certain Magne (a minister) comes 
forward, and notre monsieur helps hini and 
gets all the votes he can for him. The 
nomination comes off in a fortnight. We are 
all in despair not to have M. de Tocqueville 
and M. de Beaumont here, for one or two 

^ There are, and have been from the beginning, a certain 
number of Academiciens libreSf that is, honorary members, who 
receive no salary, and have not the right to vote at the 
academical elections. 



212 MADAME MOHL 

votes would save us ; and everybody has 
expressed such a desire that you should go 
and see M. de Tocqueville, in order that the 
other might come, that I take it on myself 
to entreat you to do so. 

^ M. de Corcelles was there, and said that if 
you went to Cannes, Beaumont would come, 
but not otherwise. As to Mignet, it made 
one ill to see him. With his calm, honest na- 
ture, he was reproaching himself, and, though 
he tried to contain himself, he let out that if 
Baude were not elected he would resign his 
place of secretary ; and he seems capable of 
it. The princess is in a frantic state about it, 
for this is all he has to live on. I, who have 
seen M. Fauriel in a similar case, I know what 
these calm natures are capable of. My dear 
M. Ampere, if you could take this little trip 
to Cannes, you would, in the first place, give 
immense pleasure to M. de Tocqueville. I 
know that another friendship detains you, but 
you travel about so readily that you would 
not mind absenting yourself for a week or 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 213 

two. Think about it. You may, perhaps, 
regret if you don't consent. Your friend in 
Rome has father, mother, and husband. You 
can return to her ; she is young, and Madame 
de Tocqueville is in a sad state of health. 

' I venture to speak to you as an old, a very 
old friend. If you do this I am certain you 
will be glad of it later, and your friends here 
will be eternally grateful to you.' 

It was too late for M. de Tocqueville to 
move in the matter. He was dying at the 
time. He never left Cannes, but died there 
on the 16th of April, eleven days after this 
letter was written. In spite of his absence 
and the powerful protection of ^ notre mon- 
sieur,' as Madame Mohl calls the Emperor, 
Baron Baude's election was carried; the Im- 
perial favor did not prove strong enough to 
force the Minister of Finance on the reluctant 
Academy. 

The excitement of an election has a sweet- 
ness known only to those who have tasted it. 



214 MADAME MOHL 

Few were more fitted to enjoy this than Ma- 
dame Mohl. Her special genius found here 
a fine field of operation. While the contest 
lasted, the salon of the Rue du Bac was like 
the headquarters of an army before the en- 
gagement. All day long there were comings 
and goings in hot haste, notes were being 
sent to and fro, and the air was full of the 
smell of battle. And what rejoicings there 
were when the right man won ! ' 

Many remember the delight Madame Mohl 
showed when Pere Lacordaire was named one 
of the Forty. It was a personal joy to her 

^ When M. Laprade was elected, Madame Mohl wrote to 
Ampere : — 

' I never saw a man so improved by the election as he is. 
He is no longer the same being. He is gay, talkative, 
sprightly; he who used to have such a melancholy air is 
completely transfigured. His father is coming up from 
Lyons to be present at the reception: he is seventy-eight, 
and has not been in Paris for thirty yeai-s. It will be a 
great family festival. . . . Oh, I do love the Inslitut ! ' 

The Institut comprises the five Academies : Academie des 
Beaux-Arts, Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 
Academie des Sciences (exactes), Academie des Sciences 
Morales et Politiques, and Academie Frangaise, that is, of the 
Forty Immortals, an assembly in which every form of intel- 
lectual greatness is supposed to be represented. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 215 

that her valued friend, the noble and sympa- 
thetic De Tocqueville, should be replaced by 
the great Dominican orator, and that the lat- 
ter should be welcomed to the vacant chair 
by another dear friend, Guizot. She was 
greatly excited by this election on all accounts. 
* What a wonderful thing it is,' she kept say- 
ing, ' to see Guizot, a Protestant, receiving a 
monk into the Academy ! What will he say 
to him ? ' Many were asking the same ques- 
tion. The event was calculated to excite a 
deeper interest than any stirred by personal 
or party feeling, evoking, as it did, memories 
of the long past, and of more recent but bit- 
ter strife between the causes which these two 
champions represented. Guizot gave utter- 
ance to the general feeling in the opening 
words of his discourse, when, pointing to the 
majestic figure in the Dominican cowl, he 
exclaimed, ^ Monsieur,^ what should we two 

^ Monsieur is the academical formula used towards all 
members, without distinction of rank or calling, — to a royal 
prince, a monk, a bishop, or a man of letters indiscriminately. 



216 MADAME MOHL 

have had to say to one another six hundred 
years ago ? ' 

One incident occurred on this memorable 
occasion which marred Madame Mohl's satis- 
faction. The Empress, as a daughter of the 
house of Guzman which honors St. Dominick 
as its purest glory, and as a mark of respect 
for the cause represented by Pere Lacordaire, 
chose to be present at his reception. The 
great Dominican had not spoken since his 
stupendous sermon at St. Roch, after the 
coup d'etat which drew on him the Imperial 
displeasure. From that time forth he had 
maintained silence. The present opportunity 
for breaking the silence was not one that was 
congenial to him ; neither the place, the audi- 
ence, nor the circumstance was calculated to 
inspire him. His hand was accustomed to 
strike deeper chords than any he might 
awaken in the academical precincts. He 
was eloquent, inevitably, but it was not the 
eloquence that had called out the echoes of 
Notre Dame and shaken souls to their centre; 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 217 

he was out of his element. Guizot, on the 
contrary, was in his natural place and sphere, 
and shone out at his best. On leaving the 
tribune the Empress, who had never heard 
either of the speakers before, is said to have 
remarked, 'J'y laisse une illusion et un 
prejuge.' 

Though Madame Mohl's dislike to the 
Emperor extended to all connected with him, 
it did not always make her unjust to them. 
Soon after his marriage, when slander was 
busy with the name of his beautiful Spanish 
bride, Madame Mohl, who knew from Meri- 
niee how utterly groundless these stories 
were, indignantly denied them, and once on 
a rather important occasion defended the 
Empress warmly before a large company. 
The Emperor, whose worst enemy never 
called him ungrateful, heard of this, and 
sent one of his chamberlains to Madame 
Mohl with his thanks and an invitation to 
the Tuileries. She took the invitation from 
the court dignitary, tore it up and flung it 



218 MADAME MOHL 

back to him. ^Tell your master/ she said, 
* that that is my answer ; and tell him that 
he owes me no thanks; it was not his wife 
that I defended, but an honest woman whom 
I knew to be maligned.' 

Madame Mohl's detestation of the Empire 
was marked by her habitual exaggeration in 
loving and hating. Anything that exposed 
the iniquities of the regime and its ' siippots de 
Satanl — her generic term for every function- 
ary in the Imperial service, from the prime 
minister down to the exciseman, — anything 
that threw odium or ridicule on ^Celui-ci,* 
was welcome to her as flowers in May. 

One Friday evening, at the Rue du Bac, 
M. Guizot came in, and related the following 
story that he had just heard : — 

A relation of the Duchesse de la R 

had married one of those * suppots de Satan,' 
and had further degraded herself by living 
under the roof with Celui-ci. The unhappy 
lady had become from that time forth, natu- 
rally, as one dead to her kith and kin in the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 219 

noble Faubourg; but she was now ill, dying 
it was believed, and it was a fit occasion for 
the exercise of mercy. The family therefore 
resolved to send her to judgment absolved, 
at least, by the Faubourg St. Germain. The 
duchess herself generously volunteered to 
take this message of pardon to her dying 
relative. She ordered her carriage, and 
said to the footman, ' Aux Tuileries ! ' The 
man stared, but carried the order to the 
coachman ; whereupon that venerable func- 
tionary, who had driven three generations 

of De la R s, got down from his seat, 

and, presenting himself at the carriage win- 
dow, said, '• Madame la Duchesse, I cannot 
have the honor of conducting your grace to 
the Tuileries ; my horses do not know the 
way there.' 

Madame Mohl clapped her hands in delight, 
exclaiming, -And the duchess kissed the old 
coachman ? ' 

* No,' said M. Guizot, ' but she got out of 
her carriage, and sent for a cab.' 



220 MADAME MOHL 

Madame Mohl lived on this story for a 
week, and so did her friends. 

' The present state of things makes me 
so sick/ she writes to Madame Scherer, 
apropos of the Empire, '■ that I can hardly 
digest my victuals. I should not eat at all 
if I thought much about it, so I think of 
something else, and read travels in South 
America.' 

One day a friend was waiting for her 
in the drawing-room, when she came flying 
out of M. Mohl's study, holding up her 
arms, and crying out, 'And to think that 
I don't know how to shoot ! ' This murderous 
outburst had been provoked by some fresh 
proof of the wickedness of Celui-ci. 

'If 'my friend Lady Eastlake is in Lon- 
don, I shall stay a bit with her,' she writes 
as late as 1880. ' I shall see Kinglake, 
who wrote the Crimean war. I 'm fond of 
that man ; he hated L. Nap. I took great, 
great interest in that business, but it was 
ill-managed, and cost us a large quantity 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 221 

of good honest soldiers. Maybe it morti- 
fied the Czar, but I don't think it did 
much good besides.' 

A common hate to Napoleon III. once 
gained Madame Mohl an acquaintance that 
was a source of pride and pleasure to her. 
In 1856 M. de Montalembert wrote a pam- 
phlet entitled ' Un Debat sur I'lnde/ the 
subject of which was the institutions of 
England, — her queen, her people, and her 
liberty. The writer sounded the praises of 
all these things in a political fugue of impas- 
sioned eloquence, the counter-note of which 
was an overwhelming condemnation of the 
Empire, — its head, its institutions, and its 
annihilation of liberty. Europe rang with 
the applause evoked by the brilliant publica- 
tion. M. de Montalembert was put on his 
trial for an attempt to excite disatfection 
toward the Imperial government. It was 
a splendid spectacle, the knight throwing 
down the gauntlet to Caesar, and doing 
battle single-handed against all the forces 



222 MADAME MOHL 

of the Empire. While the trial lasted, M. 
de Montalembert was the cynosure of the 
nations and the first gentleman in France. 
Judgment, of course, was given against him. 
He was condemned to three months' im- 
prisonment and a fine of three thousand 
francs. The moment this sentence was de- 
livered it was telegraphed far and wide, and 
there flashed back in response congratula- 
tions to M. de Montalembert, offers to pay 
the fine, and promises to come and visit him 
in his prison. The latter were so numerous 
that it was reported at high quarters that, 
' if a tithe of them were fulfilled the streets 
adjoining the prison would be blocked.' 

The Emperor, who had been ill-advised 
enough to allow the trial, was too wise, 
however, to incur further ridicule by let- 
ting the sentence be carried out. 

M. de Montalembert presented himself 
and his three thousand francs, the next morn- 
ing, at the prison ; but the jailer would 
accept neither. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 223 

^ I cannot take your money,' he said, 
'■ and I cannot take you ; I have no orders.' 

'But I have been condemned by the Tri- 
bunal to this fine, and to imprisonment' 

' Show me your lillet d'ecroti." 

'■ I have not got one.' 

' Then I cannot take you in.' 

'■ But you can see in the Moniteur that I 
have been condemned.' 

^ I never read the 3IonUeiir. If you want 
to get taken in here, you must first get a 
Ullet d'ecrou ; ' and with this, the jailer shut 
the wicket in the convict's face. 

There was nothing; for M. de Montalem- 
bert to do but to come away. The story was 
all over Paris the next day, and added a 
sort of humorous artistic touch to the whole 
affair. 

Madame Mohl had been intensely wrought 
up by the incident : by admiration for the 
eloquent hymn of praise to England, and 
by the chivalrous bearing of the author dur- 
ing the trial ; but this crowning ridicule, 



224 MADAME MOHL 

which the comedy at the prison gate had 
thrown on Celui-ci, so overjoyed her that 
she put on her bonnet, and went off to 
No. 40 in the same street to make the 
hero's acquaintance and wish him joy. In 
a trice they were friends. Her detestation 
of Napoleon III. amused M. de Montalem- 
bert immensely. 

' The vile villain ! I hate him so that it 
makes me quite uncomfortable ! ' she pro- 
tested, with a little stamp of her foot.^ 

Her enthusiasm for the great Catholic Pala- 
din did not pass away with the event which 
had so excited it. M. de Montalembert's vis- 
its to the Rue du Bac were red-letter days 
ever after, and during the long last illness 

^ When !N"apoleon III. was making ready for the Italian 
campaign, Madame Mohl wrote to Ampere, ' We are all 
against the war here ; every one is anxious, every one is suf- 
fering from it. For my part, as I have but one desire, I 
have not the same horror of this war; it might turn out a 
very good thing for us. Who knows? I am like Camille, 
and provided we got rid of Horace the last of the Romans 
might draw his last breath. All the same, I should die of 
the joy of it ! ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 225 

that confined him to liis room slie was often 
admitted to see him, and always cheered 
him by her clever, sympathetic, and original 
talk. 

Madame Mohl was, in spite of her dislike of 
the Emperor and consistent avoidance of all 
his entourage^ on affectionate terms with a lady 
who was his friend, and occasionally his guest. 
M. Mohl's father had been, as it has been said, 
minister of the King of Wiirtemberg. His 
daughter. Princess Sophie, now Queen of Hol- 
land, had always had a great regard for Julius 
Mohl, and when he married she extended this 
kindly feeling to his wife. The King of Hol- 
land also liked them both exceedingly, and, 
when staying at the Tuileries, would run off 
to enjoy quiet talks with his learned friend in 
the Rue du Bac. M. Mohl was as strong an 
Anti-Imperialist as his wife, though less de- 
monstrative on the subject than she. Once, 
however, in speaking of Napoleon IH. to the 
King, he called him such very hard names 
that the King protested. 

15 



226 MADAME MOHL 

*Hold, mj dear Mohl/ said his Majesty; 
'■ there is an espit de corps among our set, too ; 
and besides, I am his guest. I can't hear you 
say these things of him.' 

' Very well, sire,' said M. Mohl. * Disons 
canaille, et n'en parlous plus ! ' 

When Queen Sophie came alone to stay at 
the Tuileries, in 1869, she asked the Emperor 
if there were still an}'' salons in Paris. *^ Yes,' 
replied his Majesty, ' Madame Mohl has one, 
but she does not do me the honor of inviting 
me.' 

^ She has asked me to dine,' said the Queen, 
who had been leading up to this, ' but I don't 
like to accept the invitation, as I am your 
guest.' 

'^ You are not my guest, — you are at home,' 
said the Emperor ; ' and I beg as a favor that 
you go to Madame Mohl's.' 

The Queen went. The guests invited to 
meet her, at her own desire, were MM. Thiers, 
Barthelemy St.-Hilaire, Mignet, Jules Simon, 
Prevost-Paradol, and Leopold Ranke. The 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 227 

dinner — a dejeuner rather, for it was at twelve 
o'clock — was less brilliant than might have 
been expected from the calibre of the guests. 
They were all strong Anti-Imperialists, and 
the fact of the Queen's being the guest of the 
Emperor caused a certain gene which it was 
impossible to throw off, and this checked the 
free flow of conversation. 

Madame Mohl was, perhaps, the least im- 
pressed of all, either by the presence of roy- 
alty, or by having to entertain a person who 
was staying at the Pavilion Marsan. When 
a friend asked her if she was not anxious 
about the memi^ she replied, ^ My dear, I will 
give her a lobster ; my cook does it very well.' 
A lobster with mayonnaise sauce was to her 
the ne plus ultra of good things. 

The only survivors of those who feasted on 
this particular lobster are M. Jules Simon, and 
her dear and faithful friend M. St.-Hilaire. 
The former recalls with amusement how 
Mignet, w^lio arrived in full evening dress, 
white cravat; etc., was in great trouble about 



228 MADAME MOHL 

getting home, for it was a holiday and there 
were no cabs to be had, and he was obhged to 
walk back in his fine clothes at three in the 
afternoon. 

Queen Sophie was telling M. Jules Simon 
of a tour she had just made in the south of 
France. They had shown her the Viaduct of 
Ro cam ad our, but not the Bridge of the Gard. 
'• I told her,' he says, ^ that in that case it was 
a pariie manqiiee, and that she should return 
immediately and see the Pont du Gard. She 
replied, " I can't return this year, but I will 
next year ; and you must come, too, and you 
will dine with me in the open air on that 
Roman bridge." She fixed the date, and 
wrote it down in her pocket-book, and made 
me do the same. But the next year there 
was no question of pleasure trips, at least for 
me, or for any one in France.' 

The Emperor was curious to know how 
the dejeuner had gone off. He asked many 
questions, and begged the Queen to invite 
Madame Mohl and her friends to come and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 229 

lunch with her at the Tuileries. *^ They 
would not come to me,' he said, ^ but there 
is no reason why they should not come to 
you.' 

Apparently there was, for no one ac- 
cepted the invitation. 

Soon after this famous dejeuner, her Maj- 
esty went one morning to pay the custom- 
ary ^ visit of digestion ' at the Rue du Bac. 
Madame Mohl was in her ordinary morning 
costume, — a costume once seen never to 
be forgotten, — busy dusting the drawing- 
room, after having counted out the linen 
that had just come home and was spread out 
on the dining-room table, visible through the 
open folding doors. Suddenly, the Queen 
and her suite were shown in. The old lady 
quietly laid down her feather-duster, and, 
beautifully unconscious of herself and her 
toilet, went forward to greet her Majesty. 
The company sat down, and Madame Mohl 
chatted away as pleasantly as usual. 

A friend to whom she related the ad- 



230 MADAME MOHL 

venture, half an hour after it had occurred, 
remarked that she must have been ter- 
ribly embarrassed at being caught in such a 
plight. 

'Not a bit, my dear/ said Madame Mohl. 
' I did n't mind it in the least ; no more 
did the Queen. Her lady did, I dare say, 
and that fine gentleman who walks after 
her with the keys looked dreadfully dis- 
gusted ; but I could see the Queen was 
laughing at it all in her sleeve.' 

This intimacy with their royal friends was 
kept alive by letters. M. Mohl, especially, 
wrote often and at great length to the King. 
The correspondence was, no doubt, very in- 
teresting, touching as it did on all the burn- 
ing questions of the day, and sprinkled with 
amusing stories about the Tuileries, the 
guests and manners of the court, racy houB 
mots hitting at the Emperor, etc., all written 
in the outspoken style peculiar to M. and Ma- 
dame Mohl. The Cabinet mi}- could not let 
so piquant a morsel pass untasted, so the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 231 

letters were regularly opened there and 
copied ; the dainty dish was then set before 
the Emperor, who, with his keen sense of 
humor, always relished it highly, as M. and 
Madame Mohl were afterwards assured by one 
who was in his confidence at the time. It was 
not, however, this personage who betrayed 
the secret of the prison-house to the Molds. 
Copies of the letters were found at the Tuil- 
eries durino; the Commune when the mob 
broke into the palace, and many other se- 
crets were brought to light. It will easily 
be believed that this discovery, though it 
amused her exceedingly, did not soften Ma- 
dame Mold's heart towards Napoleon III. 

Both M. and Madame Mohl were genuinely 
hospitable, and their hospitality was simple 
and natural, as they were themselves, and free 
from the smallest taint of display. The honne^ 
in her white cap and apron, waited at table, 
except on extraordinary occasions, when a 
man was had in. Thev had a arood cook, 



232 . MADAME MOHL 

clever at tliat old-fashioned cuisine hourgeoise 
which, like other good things, is disappearing 
gradually from the face of the land. There 
was no attempt at fine dishes, but everything 
was excellent, and there was plenty of it ; 
' enough even for a hungry schoolboy,' says 
a venerable Academician, who from youth to 
age was an honored guest at that hospitable 
board, ^ and you felt heartily welcome.' 

It sometimes happened that Madame Mold's 
hospitality outran her space, and if a dinner, 
owing to some particular circumstance, prom- 
ised to be very interesting she would invite 
more people than she had room for. But 
neither they nor she minded this. When all 
the seats were taken, she would say to the 
supernumeraries, * You can sit down, and wait 
till the others are done, and then you shall 
have your dinner.' And they were quite 
content to do so. As M. St.-Hilaire says, you 
never thought about the dinner ; you were 
thinking of the/e^'e d' esprit that was going to 
be served. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 233 

Surely it was to the credit of Parisian 
society that it was so, and that people were 
so eager for invitations to a table where the 
only excess they were likely to indulge in 
was a gourmandise <f esprit. Were the wits 
and savants of the eighteenth century more 
material than those of the nineteenth? It 
would almost seem so, if we compare Ma- 
dame Mohl's simple, wholesome dinner 
parties with the LucuUus-like banquets that 
Madame Geoffrin and Madame Du Deffand 
used to spread for the same class of guests. 
Madame Du Deffand considered that supper 
was one of the four last ends of man, and, 
acting on this principle, she took infinite 
pains to make her petits soupers worthy of 
their important mission ; while Madame 
Geoffrin studied the secrets of the Epicu- 
reans, in order that modern philosophers 
might fare as daintily at her table as the 
Greek poets and sages did in ancient times. 
Madame Mohl, beyond ordering a good 
and abundant meal, gave little thought to 



234 MADAME MOHL 

the mere material details of her entertain- 
ments; but she took great pains with the 
intellectual menu. She would give time and 
thought and personal trouble to provide for 
each guest intellectually what he would most 
enjoy, and would carefully consider whether 
this person would like to meet the other, and 
to sit next So-and-So. Her great preoccupa- 
tion was the combining of congenial elements 
for all in general and particular. 

Her dear friend, Ampere, was the most 
* invited ' man of his day, and it was, in 
consequence, difficult to secure him. Sam- 
son, the actor, had expressed a great de- 
sire to meet him, and Madame Mohl, who 
had taken a fancy to Samson, determined 
to procure him this pleasure. After sound- 
ing Ampere, she writes to him: — 

* I forgot yesterday to remind you that 
you told me you would be glad to dine 
with Samson. SoUvent femme varie ; but if 
you, a man, are above this, I should like to 
know what day would suit you this next 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 235 

week. Mj dear M. Ampere, do me this 
pleasure, and the pleasure of giving pleas- 
ure to Samson, for whom I have a par- 
ticular weakness. He is such a galant homme 
in his literary opinions ; for I maintain 
that there is a point of honor in literary 
opinions as in all others.' I don't know 
his character, a fond ; but all that I hear 
him say about art, especially about his 
own, is in such good taste and so noble 
that I want very much to cultivate him. 
Now, it will be a first-rate opportunity to 
have him come and dine with you, who 
are a true critic. So write me three nice 
little very legible words saying you will 
come.* 

Ampere did go, and the dinner was a 
most delio;htful one. 

Mrs. Gaskell w^anted to meet M, de Tocque- 
ville, and Madame Mohl again appealed to 
Ampere to help her to gratify this wish: 

^ Can you come and dine on Wednesday, 
to meet Mrs. Gaskell, who adores you ? 



236 MADAME MOHL 

They tell me (Mr. Senior tells me) that M. 
de Tocqueville is in Paris without Madame. 
Will you ask him to come with you? If 
Madame is here and would come, I shall be 
charmed. But I beg of you to arrange this, 
if it be impossible ; to ask you to do what 
is possible would be to fall short of my 
high opinion of you.' 

While staying at a country house in Eng- 
land she writes to her friend, Madame Salis 
Schwabe : — 

^ Monsieur Mohl is now in Paris, and 
much occupied, because there is a meeting 
of the Geographical Society there just now. 
The learned societies from Germany, Russia, 
Sweden, Denmark, Italy, England, &c., have 
each sent some savant to represent them, 
and I was half-tempted to go over and give 
them a dinner; but as I am not very strong 
I exhorted my spouse to give it, and he has 
invited some eleven or twelve menfolk ; no 
ladies. Poor soul ! I hope he '11 miss me, 
and that it will be very dull ; but I 'm 



HBR SALON AND HER FRIENDS 237 

afraid the ungallant wretches will not care, 
and will all talk together, and frighten the 
poor sparrows with their noise. I hope 
my little cook will make them a good 
dinner.' 

She was never unmindful of the good din- 
ner, but it was always subordinate with her 
to the good talk. Mrs. Bishop i^nee O'Con- 
nor Morris) having disappointed her, owing 
to some sudden indisposition, Madame Mohl 
writes : — 

' I was very sorry ; but as I always con- 
sider a dinner party a morsel of art, I 
did not think enough of your misfortune 
in being ill, so much did I think of my 
own. I had arranged that you should sit 
by an American, who is considered very 
learned and especially very clever ; but, 
of course, he has nothing but his tongue, 
and when ears are wanting, what is to be 
expected ? His French is limited to the 
useful, and I counted on you to bring out 
the ornamental. 



238 MADAME MOHL 

'Then, I had a M. Bertholet, thought 
the first chemist in Europe; can almost in- 
vent human beings ; nay, I believe quite, it 
is said, or some such things. This was for 
your daughter. All stopped short like a con- 
cert when two of the performers are kept at 
home ! It is to be hoped that some other 
piece of art may occur ; but luck is all the 
battle in everything. 

^ You were very unlucky to be ill in an 
hotel. I don't go to see you because it would 
be sure to bring you ill luck, and you'll be 
in bed.' 

In 1867, George Eliot' writes to Madame 
Bodichon : — 

' We prolonged our stay in Paris in order 
to see Madame Mohl, who was very good to 
us : invited the Scherers and other interesting 
people to meet us at dinner on the 29th, and 
tempted us to stay and breakfast with her on 
the 31st, by promising to invite Renan, which 
she did successfully, and so procured us a bit 

1 Vide George ElioVs Life, vol. iii. chap. i. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 239 

of experience that we were glad to have, over 
and above the pleasure of seeing a httle more 
of herself and M. Mohl. I like them both, 
and wish there were a chance of knowing 
them better.' 

Mr. Grant Duff has many pleasant reminis- 
cences of his intercourse with M. Mohl which 
extended at broken intervals over a period of 
five-and-twenty years. One of his earliest 
recollections is of a dinner party at which 
he met, among other remarkable men, M. 
Barthelemy St.-Hilaire, Cousin, Mignet, and 
Villemain. Of the first named he speaks with 
warm admiration ; not a few Frenchmen will 
endorse his estimate of Cousin as ' vain, preju- 
diced, paradoxical, and assuming.' Villemain 
appeared to him the very perfection of a con- 
versationalist, never giving himself those airs 
of a gray-haired spoiled child which made 
Cousin so curiously disagreeable. Villemain 
was a delightful raconteur ; talking about the 
days of his youth when he was secretary of 
the French Embassy in London, he related 



240 MADAME MOHL 

how he sat long one night talking to Canning 
about Simonides, when some foolish busy- 
body went to the ambassador and warned him 
to interfere lest the English statesman should 
worm state secrets out of his young subordi- 
nate. He amused the company very much 
by the account of his having been charged to 
offer Lamartine an embassy, and the poet 
characteristically replying that he would ac- 
cept the post of Ambassador to Vienna pro- 
vided there was a Congress there ! 

On another occasion, the conversation 
turned on the impending war between Austria 
and France (in 1859), a crisis which was agi- 
tating all Europe. The question expanded 
to an historical discussion, and the Middle 
Ages were attacked and defended with the 
vehemence which they seem invariably to 
provoke. Suddenly Mignet remarked, ' T 
have now no doubt that there will be 
war ! ' A dead silence followed ; it was 
broken by Cousin's exclaiming ' Revenons 
a Louis XI ! ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 241 

There was always good talk to be had in 
such company. There was the old geologist, 
Elie de Beaumont, of whose innovating ten- 
dencies in science Goethe in his later days 
spoke so contemptuously j there was the oc- 
togenarian Regnier (the Sanskritist), curious 
about Mr. Grant Duff's Eastern experiences 
and plying him with questions, or growing en- 
thusiastic about his old pupil, the Comte de 
Paris, — a subject on which he always waxed 
eloquent; there was Khanikoff, the Russian 
traveller and diplomatist ; there was Bentham, 
the botanist ; there was Ernest Renan, always 
brilliant, subtle, persuasive ; there was, first 
and last, the host himself, with his pungent 
esprit., his dry humor, his inexhaustible fund 
of anecdote always ready to illustrate every 
opinion and add interest to every argument. 
Once his guests were talking about the revo- 
lution of '48 and the utopia that it represented 
to so many; M. Mohl agreed that the hopes 
of the people rose very high at that moment ; 
he had himself heard Louis Blanc say, turning 

16 



242 MADAME MOHL 

to the crowd that pressed round him as 
he was getting into his carriage, ' I hope the 
time will come when we shall all have our 
carriages ! ' upon which some one called out : 
'And, then, who will drive me ? ' 

With such social elements, it would seem 
as if every dinner party must inevitably have 
been delightfully pleasant ; but Madame Mohl 
was hard to please ; her standard, in this de- 
partment at least, was very high. As she 
said to Mrs. Bishop, a dinner party was a 
work of art in its Avay; and, perhaps, as she 
did so much to make the work perfect, she 
had a right to be exacting towards her guests 
whom she looked upon as responsible fellow- 
artists. She had a comical habit of taking 
notes after each little dinner, of the way her 

guests had behaved : ' M. X took no 

trouble to make himself agreeable. Madame 

Y was grumpy : sha'n't ask her in a 

hurry again. M. Z went away too soon : 

very rude of him. M. A was delight- 
ful j' and so on. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 243 

The sums of money lavished on eating and 
drinking at dinner parties excited Madame 
Mohl's indignation, both as a vulgar display 
on the part of the hosts, and as underrating 
people's capacity for enjoying worthier things. 
Some one enlarging, in her presence, on the 
•^ splendid hospitality' of a very rich family 
in Paris, she retorted furiously, * Hospitality ! 
Humph ! Purse-pride and ostentation, that 's 
what it is ! Those people don't care a button 
about offering hospitality to their friends ; 
they are only thinking of showing off their 
money, and being called stylish. I can't 
abide such people ! ' The lamentations of 
others, who refrained from exercising hospi- 
tality according to their means, on the plea 
that they could not do so properly, were just 
as peremptorily snubbed. 'Why should not 
you suppose a friend as ready to eat a good 
plain dinner at your table as at his own ? ' 
she asked of one of these grumblers. ' It is 
vanity and purse-pride that prevent people 
being hospitable, half the time. Why should 



244 MADAME MOHL 

we think it necessary to provide our friends 
with ten times as much to eat and drink as 
they are in the habit of having at home ? ' 
Dinner parties were for her opportunities for 
talk, the means, not the end ; they were a 
kind of intellectual picnic, to which every 
one brought a contribution towards the com- 
mon meal. Esprit, not eating and drink- 
ing, was the bait that lured people to her 
board. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate M. 
Mohl's hospitality, his generosity, and his in- 
difference to money for its own sake ; but 
these qualities were joined, as it often hap- 
pens, to a proportionate horror of waste. It 
was a positive annoyance to him to see other 
people squander their money, or destroy their 
property from carelessness. The wasteful ex- 
penditure of English establishments was a 
downright discomfort to him. He used to 
relate, as a grievance, how when staying at 
a nobleman's country place, he was always 
careful to put out the candles in his room 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 245 

before coming down to dinner, and the 
moment his back was turned housemaids 
came and lighted them again ! One eve- 
ning he had occasion to go up three times 
to fetch something in his room, and each 
time he put out the candles, and found 
them lighted when he returned. ^What 
foolish waste, when there was no one in 
the room all those hours ! ' he would re- 
mark in relating this proof of extravagant 
housekeeping. 

With all her tact and her care to draw 
congenial spirits together, Madame Mohl 
could not prevent them from occasionally 
disagreeing ; but these little movements gen- 
erally had no worse result than to exercise 
her wit and cleverness. One Friday evening, 
in 1860 (before that memorable one that has 
been mentioned), Madame Ristori was pre- 
sented to a lady bearing one of the most 
illustrious of contemporary Catholic names. 
They sat down together on a sofa, and one 
who was present recalls the look of intense 



246 MADAME MOHL 

admiration which the grande dame bent on 
the beautiful actress as she conversed with 
her. They chatted very cordially for a time ; 
then some evil spirit brought the Italian 
situation on the tapis, and the Comtesse de 
M , w^ith the warmth of a loyal Catho- 
lic, denounced Garibaldi's invasion and the 
wrongs committed against the Holy See. 
Madame Ristori, whose sympathies on the 
Liberal side were equally strong, fired up 
in defence of the United Italy movement, 
and with that incomparable gesture that 
had thrilled a larger audience the previous 
evening, *Ah, Madame,' she exclaimed, ^I 
admire Pius IX., but I am an Italian before 
all things ! ' 

Every eye was turned on the two ladies, 
and the excited salon was wondering what 
was going to happen, when Madame Mohl, 
like a beneficent fairy, stepped in, and en- 
treated Madame Ristori to fulfil her promise 
of reciting something. The latter, with equal 
tact and grace, at once consented, and 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 247 

declaimed a passage from the Paradiso * with 
admirable power and pathos. 

Madame Mohl was known to all the 
world as a femme d'esprit, but to those who 
knew her best she was better than this ; 
she was essentially a femme de caur. She 
was always a very economical person, and 
in later years economy had degenerated 
into something very near avarice, the re- 
sult in a measure of mental decay; but 
only those who were the objects of her 
kindness knew how much real generosity 
had always redeemed this tendency, even 
in the days when her means were lim- 
ited. One or two instances will illustrate 
this. 

1 Madame Mohl had a passionate admiration for the Di- 
vina Commedia, having been inoculated in youth with the 
worship of Dante by Fauriel. ' I would give both my lan- 
guages to understand Dante's language with the ease I have 
in French, which I know better than English,' she writes to 
a friend ; ' but even chewing and chewing him, as the birds 
do to get at the kernel of a grain of millet, he is the greatest 
genius in the world. ' 



248 MADAME MOHL 

She met at the house of Madame Chen- 
vreux^ a lady who gained her livehhood by 
copying manuscripts. Madame Mohl heard 
that she was very poor, and, being always 
exceedingly gracious to persons in a de- 
pendent or trying position, she asked this 
lady to come and see her. The lady did, 

1 Those who have read J. J Ampere's letters, etc., will be 
familiar with the name of this charming friend of his. It 
was somewhere about 1855 that Madame Mohl wrote to Am- 
pere this letter, which, with many others, has been confided 
to me by Madame Cheuvreux : — 

' You said you would introduce me to Madame Cheuvreux. 
I now summon you to keep your word. If you are too busy, 
tell me her day, her hour, and if she will have me I will go and 
see her. Life is short, and I hate putting off. There is a 
lady who used to say to her husband, " Or, cela, je veux entrer 
dans mon avenir tout de suite." Her hair is white, and he 
is always saying to her, " We will keep this for our avenir ^ 
I think that saying of hers ought to become an axiom. I 
adopt it. I have lots of gray hairs ; I won't pull them out; I 
won't be plucked, as I see many ladies are •, and I want to do 
and to have immediately whatever I want to do and have. I 
love you. I tell you I do. You are an ingrate. Never mind. 
One must make the best of the friends one has.' 

She did enter immediately into the enjoyment of this future, 
and found in Madame Cheuvreux a warmth of response which 
made it easy to do so. The proverbial hospitality of Stors 
was a source of great pleasure to M. and Madame Mohl in 
happy days, and a refuge to the survivor when these were 
past. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 249 

and was very kindly received. Presently 
Madame Mohl left the room abruptly, and, 
coming back, stuffed something into her 
muff. ' Carry this away,' she said, ' and say 
nothing about it. Come soon again to see me ; 
I may have some work for you.' Another 
visitor was announced, so the lady took leave. 
On examining the contents of her muff she 
found a roll of three hundred francs in gold. 

Madame Cheuvreux relates another delicate 
trait of Madame Mohl's generosity : — 

One morning, at eight o'clock, Madame 
Cheuvreux's servant, a new footman, came to 
say that ' there was a poor woman in the 
hall who desired to see Madame.' The poor 
woman proved to be Madame Mohl. ' My 

dear,' she said, * the sale of 's atelier takes 

place to-day at two o'clock, and you must run 
all over the place and make everybody come 
to it; they must buy up everything, and pay 
good prices, for the money is wanted.' Ma- 
dame Cheuvreux promised to do what she 
could. Madame Mohl was with difficulty 



250 MADAME MOHL 

persuaded to take a cup of coffee before hur- 
rying away to beat up other buyers, and she 
was running all over Paris till the hour of the 
sale, at which she arrived punctually. When 
it was over Madame Cheuvreux offered to 
take her home. She hesitated a moment, but 
accepted, and was followed to the carriage by 
two porters bearing boxes and parcels, which 
were piled up on the vacant seat. 

*My dear,' she explained, 'j^ou won't say 
anything about it, but I have bought up a few 

things that I know Madame holds to, and 

I will send them to her when all this business 
is over.' She had spent nearly two thousand 
francs in this act of kindness to the friend 

of her youth, the beautiful Louise , now 

an aged widow in straitened circumstances. 
They had come together again after long 
years of estrangement, -the immediate cause 
of their reconciliation being some injustice 
committed against Louise's husband by the 
Government, which aroused Madame Mohl's 
indignation and sympathy. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 251 



CHAPTER V. 

In 1870 M. and Madame Mohl went to Eng- 
land for their annual visit, which was pro- 
longed, as in the case of so many others, 
by the outbreak of the Franco-German war. 
Her anxiety all through this time was intense. 
Her friends left nothing; undone to make her 
sojourn among them agreeable in itself, but 
she remained bitterly sad at heart. M. Mohl 
was, naturally, still more so. It was im- 
possible, it would have been unnatural, that 
he, a German by blood, birth, and early as- 
sociations, should not rejoice with his father- 
land, should not vibrate to the triumph of 
German armies, however sincerely he might, 
on the other hand, mourn for the misfortunes 
of France, and feel for the defeat of her brave 



252 MADAME MOHL 

soldiers. Blood is thicker than water, and no 
adoption, no grafted affections, no sense of 
gratitude for obligations generously conferred, 
could stifle the voice of nature, and make 
Julius Mohl, the son of German parents, with 
unadulterated German blood in his veins, curse 
the triumph of German arms and bewail like 
a Frenchman the glory of German warriors 
and statesmen. 

That he ever uttered a word which could 
be construed into satisfaction at the disasters 
of France no one who knew him ought to have 
credited \ yet there were some persons who 
reported that both he and his wife, who owed 
so much to France and French society, had 
turned against their adopted country in her 
hour of sorrow, and had nothing but hard 
words for her. These stories found credence 
in certain quarters. It is probable that those 
who repeated them were glad to shift upon M. 
and Madame Mohl the unpatriotic things they 
were ashamed to say from themselves. That 
Madame Mohl gave small quarter to the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 253 

criminal blunders and the ignorance of some 
of the French leaders we can well imagine ; 
that she poured out vitriol in gallons on the 
head of Gelui-ci, and denounced him in the 
strono-est lanoruasre to be found in the die- 
tionary, we can also readily believe ; but that 
she rejoiced in the downfall of France, and 
turned against her in her humiliation, no one 
who had any knowledge of her character 
ought for a moment to have believed. 

M. Mohl was so annoyed by these reports 
that he wrote to the Times^ denying them. 
Madame Salis Schwabe, herself a German, 
bears witness to the injustice of them. 'I 
had the privilege of having dear M. Mohl 
staying with me during two of those dreadful 
months,' she writes to me, * and I can assure 
you he was perfectly unhappy because, owing 
to the siege, he was prevented returning to 
his adopted Fatherland. I thought him at 
the time almost more French than a French- 

1 I have not been able to find this letter in the Times, but 
several of my friends distinctly remember seeing it there. 



254 MADAME MOHL 

man. He felt acutely the error of Napoleon 
III. in declaring the war, but this did not 
make him less ardent in his love for France 
and his friends there.' 

When Madame Cheuvreux met M. Mohl, 
on his return to Paris after the siege, she 
accosted him with, * Well, my dear friend, you 
must be sorry that you ever made yourself 
a Frenchman ! ' He replied unhesitatingly, 
^ No, I am not sorry. If it were to be done 
over again, I would do it.' 

In speaking to Madame d'Abbadie, on re- 
turning from a visit to Germany some time 
after the war, Madame Mohl said, 'Nations 
squint in looking at one another ; we must 
discount what Germany and France say of 
each other.' She herself called for a liberal 
discount in construing her exaggerated lan- 
guage into its real meaning. For instance, 
when M. Forgues was translating Dickens for 
the Revue des Deux Mondes, and making large 
cuttings out of the original, by order of the edi- 
tor, Madame Mohl was furious, and meeting 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 255 

Madame Clieuvrenx, ^ Your friend Forgnes 
is a canaille V she burst out, *he is destroying 
Dickens. I don't ever want to set eyes on 
him again ! ' 

A person who distributed epithets with 
such odd perception of their value was not to 
be taken an serieux in moments of abnormal 
excitement. Both in praise and blame she 
used words with very various degrees of 
precision. 

*Come and dine to meet General Fox,' 
she wrote one day to Ampere. ' he can't bear 
Cousin, hit you are Ms passion ! * 

We cannot wonder if, in her excitement 
during the lamentable progress of the war, 
she sometimes talked in a way that led the 
uninitiated to suppose that she was denoun- 
cing the nation when she only meant to de- 
nounce the men who were bringing all this 
misery upon it. 

The moment peace was signed M. Mohl 
went back to Paris. His wife was to have fol- 
lowed him in a few days ; but the Commune 



256 MADAME MOHL 

broke out, and made this impossible. The 
interval of separation was a time of cruel 
anxiety to her. The accounts that came 
from Paris were more horrible than those 
which had been coming throughout the siege. 
The city, already battered by German artillery, 
was now a prey to the more savage horrors 
of civil war ; and many of those dear to 
Madame Mohl were, she believed, exposed 
with her husband to violent death at the 
hands of a populace exasperated to madness 
by the strain of hunger and nervous excite- 
ment. For the first time in her life, it 
occurred to Madame Mohl that M. Mohl 
might die and leave her behind him, and from 
the moment this possibility presented itself 
to her she was half crazed with anxiety. But 
she went about her life just as usual, never 
parading this distress of mind, but domg what 
she could to escape from it ; so much so that 
those who met her in society, at dinners and 
garden-parties, the centre of attention, and 
always racy and amusing, thought she must 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 257 

be heartlessly indifferent to her husband's 
dano;er. 

Mrs. Ritchie (Thackeray) penitently con- 
fesses to having so misjudged her. ^ I could 
not bear/ she tells me, * to see her going 
about everywhere here, while dear M, Mohl 
was in such danger over there, and I used to 
keep out of her way. Now that I am older, 
I see that it is better for people to be natural 
and live their own lives simply, than to poser 
anxiety, which is none the less from not be- 
ing acted too.' 

Mrs. Ritchie was one of the few English 
friends who saw M. Mohl when he was alone 
in the Eue du Bac, while it was being threat- 
ened on all sides by the rebel mob. ' During 
the Commune,' she says, *I went to see M. 
Mohl with my cousin. Miss Ritchie, to beg 
him to come away with us ; but he described 
his quiet life, his daily visits, unmolested, to 
the Bibliotheque ; he pointed to the gardens 
from his window, to his books, and shook 
his head at the idea of coming away. He 

17 



258 MADAME MOHL 

then began to praise his two maids. (They 
were the same who were so faithful to 
Madame Mohl after his death.) " Think of 
those two impossible women," he said, "here 
all through the siege, half starved, and saying 
to me when I returned, 'You will find the 
preserves quite safe, sir, in the cupboard. 
We only used two pots.' I felt inclined to 
break every pot on the shelf, I was so angry 
with them ! " ' 

When the insurrection was crushed, and 
the gates opened, Madame Mohl started off to 
Paris with the Dean and Lady Augusta. Her 
joy at being home again w^as exuberant as a 
child's. She skipped along the streets, and 
was in raptures at the sight of everything. 
But her dear, beautiful Paris was never the 
same place to her after 1870. Perhaps it has 
never been the same place to any of us. 
Society was broken up. Streets and palaces 
that were burnt down have been rebuilt, most 
of them ; but the social edifice once destroyed 
is not so easily reconstructed. Even so wide 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 259 

and heterogeneously composed a circle as 
that of the Rue du Bac was snapped asunder 
at too many points for the chain to relink 
itself again, not, at least, for a long time to 
come. Many old friends had left Paris, and 
gone to live in the provinces : some remained 
away in their country places ; foreigners, who 
had taken root in France, folded their tent, 
and went away for good and all. Everything 
was changed. The pleasant place was no 
more the same, because so many of the pleas- 
ant people w^ere gone. 

M. Mohl never recovered the shock and 
strain of that dreadful year. He was a man 
to suffer deeply from an impersonal grief. 
He took the downfall of France greatly to 
heart; and it was a sharp pain to him, too, 
to find that his German birth was now re- 
membered where it had formerly been for- 
gotten. He loved his adopted country better 
and more wisely than many born Frenchmen, 
and it was bitter to him to find that many 
doubted this, and that his German origin 



260 MADAME MOHL 

made a barrier now between him and some of 
them. Family afflictions followed soon upon 
this national sorrow. His brother's death 
was a heavy blow. His health began to fail. 
Every one saw this but his wife. He was ten 
years younger than she, and the possibility 
of his dying first had never occurred to her, 
except during that anxious time when he was 
alone in Paris. She saw him suffering and 
growing more and more feeble, and she was 
very unhappy, but not the least alarmed. 
She had entire confidence in Dr. Richet's skill 
to restore him in due course to health. ' I 
owe an everlasting gratitude to M. Richet, 
whose science and incomparable skill have 
made the poor cripple walk,' she writes to 
Madame Cheuvreux; and announces trium- 
phantly that M. Mohl had been out to pay 
a visit, ' in spite of his legs.' 

Later on, when every one but herself saw 
there was not a shadow of hope, she writes, in 
answer to the repeated invitation to Stors,' 

1 Madame Cheuvreux' countiy place, near Paris. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 261 

' I am looking forward to a fete in being among 
you all, and hope to get back a little of mj 
entrain near you, whom Heaven has endowed 
with the power of putting every one about 
you in good spirits.' 

But her blindness did not alter the fact 
that M. Mohl was going from her. One morn- 
ing Mrs. "Wynne Finch met the Doctor com- 
ing out of the house, and learned from him 
that the end was close at hand ; it might be 
in a few days, perhaps sooner. She found 
Madame Mohl just as usual, quite unaware of 
the truth. There was something dreadful and 
pathetic in this unconsciousness. It seemed 
cruel to undeceive her, and still more cruel 
not to do so. Mrs. Wynne Finch, with the 
courage of a true friend, resolved to tell her 
the truth. She broke it to her as tenderly as 
she could : ^ Indeed, indeed, there is danger, 
my dear friend. The time is very short, and 
it would be cruel and selfish, I feel, not to 
tell you.' 

At first the poor soul did not, then would 



262 MADAME MOHL 

not, understand. She shrank away angrily 
from the merciful cruelty of the revelation. 

' It is not true ! I don't believe it ! There 
is no danger ; they never said there was any 
danger ! ' she cried, and turned away, like a 
vexed child, and ran out of the room, back to 
M. Mold, ^reeling with the shock,' as she 
afterwards confessed. 

But her eyes were opened. The moment 
they fell upon him she saw that he was dying. 
She never left his side again for a moment. 
She watched by him all that night, holding 
his hand, while he struggled for breath. 
Sometimes he stroked her face. 

'- That stroking has been an ineffable com- 
fort to me,' she wrote, a year later, to Mrs. 
Wynne Finch : ^ it was an endearment when 
he could not speak, — the only sign he could 
give me of his affection, and that he knew it 
was I who was beside him.' He died in the 
night of the 3d of January, 1876.^ 

1 The most important of M. Mohl's works is his transla- 
tion of the Shah-Naneh (Book of Kings) of Firdousi, with the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 263 

During that last day, when she watched 
him passing away, conscious now that he was 
going from her, Madame Mohl found courage 
to ask her husband about his last wishes con- 
cerning certain things he had at heart : among 
others, she asked him what he should like her 
to do with his dear books, his most precious 
possession. '^ Shall I give them in your name 
to the library at Stuttgart?' she said. 

But he replied. ' No ; sell them here. 
That is the way to make books useful ; they 
go to those who want them.' 

She had often heard him say the same thing. 
He had spent forty years in collecting his 

Persian text opposite the French version. The publication 
of this work occupied him from 1838 to the close of his life. 
After his death Madame Mohl brought out a smaller edition 
of the Shah-Naneh, more accessible to students than the mag- 
nificent six folio one which stands as the chief monument of 
her husband's Oriental lore. His earliest publications were 
ti'anslations from the Chinese of the Y-King and the Chi- 
King, and fragments of Zoroaster from the Persian. 

Madame Mohl also collected and reprinted in two volumes 
her husband's reports on Oriental Studies all over the world, 
delivered yearly to the Asiatic Society for over thirty years, 
and which the learned say contribute the most remarkable 
evidence of his own wide and deep knowledge of the subject. 



264 MADAME MOHL 

Oriental library, and used to say ^ It is impos- 
sible to write on those subjects without pos- 
sessing certain books.' 

Three days after his death, two booksellers 
from Leipsic wrote to Madame Mohl, offering 
to purchase his library; but she would not 
hear of letting it out of Paris. She had the 
books sold at the house as soon as it was pos- 
sible. The sale and its inevitably painful de- 
tails excited and distressed her to frenzy. ' I 
suffered so intensely,' she wrote to Madame 
Scherer, some days later, ' at seeing the brutal 
manner in which those creatures kicked my 
dear husband's books about when taking them 
away, I was so miserable at having had that 
beast of a bookseller to manage it, that, after 
the dreadful day in which they finished the 
sack of my house, I begged none of my 
friends would speak to me of the transaction. 
I was in a state of irritability nothing can de- 
scribe, and obliged to repeat to myself that I 
had done it because he had told me, and I 
could not disobey him. Since then, two or 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 265 

three friends have come to tell me about it ; 
but I begged them to give me no details. 
My feeling was as if mj dear husband was 
being dissected. I can't write to you without 
tears. 

* But I know I am like a creature without 
a skin. I ought to have known the public 
by this time. What is so disgusting, too, is 
that after spending his life in setting up this 
odious Asiatic Society, spreading knowledge 
and spending his mind, they won't give to it 
a lodging big enough to place the books ! 
There was one in the Palais Mazarin ; 
it has been divided, and M. Eegnier, who 
does his best, tells me half the books are 
packed in cases, for want of room. My din- 
ing-room is crammed with the pamphlets of 
the Societe, which my dear husband lodged 
here. 

•I have asked Regnier where I should 
send them. He says, "Pray, keep them; 
we have not room." The English friends of 
my dear husband are astounded; they have 



266 MADAME MOHL 

heard so much of the liberality of the French 
Government for science and learning and 
giving room, etc' 

Her one interest in life henceforth was her 
husband's memory and work, and everything 
connected with them. Her grief for him was 
inconsolable. It had in it something of the 
child's inability to realize death. She could 
not realize that he had gone away, never to 
come back to her. She had for a long time 
the forlorn look that made some one who saw 
her passing in the street say, ' Poor old soul, 
she looks like a lost dog, going about search- 
ing for his master.' 

Some time after M. Mohl's death, she came 
upon a pocket-book of his, carefully tied up 
and put away in a drawer in his room. She 
was in the act of opening it, when a sudden 
terror stayed her hand. ^Suppose,' she 
thought, 'it should contain a remembrance 
of some other woman, — something that 
would show me he had not always loved 
me as I believe ? ' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 267 

For fifteen days she went and looked at 
that little book, and put it back without open- 
ing it. At last, she told Madame d'Abbadie 
^ I feel as if my fate was in that pocket-book/ 
she said. ' If it should contain what I dread, 
it would kill me. I could not bear it ! ' 

Madame d'Abbadie insisted on her at once 
convincing herself of the folly and injustice 
of these fears. They went together into 
the deserted room, and the loving, youthful- 
hearted old woman, in fear and trembling, 
opened the pocket-book. It contained some 
early and very tender letters of her own to 
M. Mohl. She was completely overcome by 
this touching proof of his faithful affection. 

In the following summer, Madame Mohl 
went to see her niece, Mrs. Vickers; *^my 
kindest friend,' she calls her. Later, she 
went to her old friend, Mrs. Simpson {iiee 
Nassau Senior), at Bournemouth. ' It was 
easy to see,' says Mrs. Simpson,^ 'that she 

1 FiWe Macmillan, September, 1883, Recollections of Madame 
Mohl. 



268 MADAME MOHL 

had received a shock from which she would 
never recover. She was incapable of dismal 
despondency, and her elastic spirit rebounded 
at intervals. She loved the sea and the 
woods, and all the sights and sounds of the 
country. The house contained an excellent 
library of many interesting old books, and 
into these she plunged eagerly. We had a 
houseful of children and young people (with 
whom she was a great favorite), and a basket 
pony-carriage, which carried her about and 
saved her much trouble.' 

Soon after her return to Paris from these 
visits, Madame Mohl had an accident which 
shook her a good deal. She tells the story 
herself to Madame Scherer : — 

' Dear Friend, — I have been out these 
last two days, though I have an arnica 
poultice on my shin just below the knee. 
If M. Haureau had not been tall and strong, 
I should have been killed, and my dear 
husband's papers would have been dispersed 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 269 

or lost; for who has time to look after the 
remains of those who are gone ! I cannot 
express how glad I am my life was spared, 
on that account. 

*It was coming down a dirty, dingy old 
staircase in the Imprimerie, which, like a 
goose, I had consented to go over and see ; 
not that I cared one button about it, but my 
pet niece, Margy, had so caught at the pro- 
posal of M. Haureau to show it to us that I 
had not the heart to refuse. He was preced- 
ing us downstairs, three or four steps lower. 
Shall I ever forget the terror when I felt 
myself fall ? I fainted away with sheer 
fright, for nothing was knocked but my 
legs, and luckily I was light enough not to 
knock down M. Haureau, and hurl him and 
myself down to the bottom; but how ^ay 
legs were so much hurt I can't imagine. 
I have just been a fortnight a prisoner. 

'Indeed, I wish you were nearer. It 
would be the greatest comfort to me. My 
dear Madame d'Abbadie will not be here 



270 MADAME MOHL 

till April. It was only my terrible loss 
last year that made her and her husband 
spend a winter here ; for, like queer people, 
which they are, they spend the spring and 
part of the summer in Paris, and the autumn 
and winter in the Pyrenees, where they pre- 
tend it is warmer. I have other worthy neigh- 
bors, — not delightful, like Madame d'Abbadie, 
but kind, — and they too are obliged to leave 
Paris in the winter. Is it not ridiculous ? ' 

It was no pretence to say she rejoiced her 
life had been spared for the sake of M. Mohl's 
papers. Her sole interest and occupation now 
were these papers and his works, and all con- 
nected with them. She was ready, for this, to 
toil up and down dark stairs in the Imprimerie 
and the Institut and all over the busy city. 
^My dear husband's Shah Naneh, the small 
edition, is going on printing rapidly/ she 
writes to Madame Scherer. 'It is only a 
translation into French, not a word of Persian, 
which he luckily had said to many friends 
that he would publish. I have fulfilled his 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 271 

wish. Do joii think M. Scherer would give an 
account of it in the Temps f I don't think it 
is necessary to be an Orientalist to do so, but 
of course I can't judge. Just ask him what 
he thinks. I am sure he will judge rightly.' 

Her great consolation was reading over M. 
Mohl's letters. ' I am going to Stors to-mor- 
row/ she writes to Madame Scherer, ' and I 
shall remain there three weeks, if they don't 
get tired of me. I have refused going there 
ever since my husband is gone. 1 have been 
so happy there with him, and they were so 
fond of him ! Madame Cheuvreux made me 
promise to go this year. ... It is a pleasant 
house, "vyith a variety of visitors. I may stay 
in my room as long as I please, and I take 
with me my dear husband's letters, that are a 
perfect chronicle. All those who have read 
them say, " You ought to publish them." I 
take them with me to re-read them. Perhaps, 
on studying them under that point of view, I 
may think about it ; but I should not decide 



272 MADAME MOHL 

without advice.' Whether owing to her own 
judgment, or the advice of her friends, these 
letters were never printed. 

In the year 1877 Madame Mohl went to 
visit her husband's family in Germany. His 
two nieces,-^ whose presence, as young ladies, 
had periodically brightened the Rue du Bac, 
were both married in Germany : one to the 
celebrated Professor Helmholtz,^ the other to 
Baron von Schmidt Zabierow, governor of 
Carinthia. Madame Mohl loved both these 
nieces of her husband's as if they had been her 
own. '- 1 am very ill,' she wrote to Madame 
Cheuvreux, ' but, all the same, I mean to go 
to the marriage of my dear niece at Heidel- 
berg. It is a love match, quite according to 
my principles, but not at all according to my 
interest, for she is going to live in Hungary.' 

While in Berlin, Madame Mohl was the 
guest of Frau von Helmholtz, and the most 

1 Ida and Anna Von Mohl, daughters of Robert Von 
Mohl. 

2 The great physiologist, resident in Berlin. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 273 

distinguished persons in German society vied 
in showing her attention. The Empress 
Augusta received her in a private audience at 
the Palace, and expressed herself as charmed 
with the old lady's raciness and brilliant con- 
versational powers. At a soiree where Ma- 
dame Mohl was presented to the Crown Prince 
and Princess, the Prince sat and talked with 
her en tete-a-tete for a long time, and she used 
to boast of having had a ^ delightful flirtation ' 
with H.I.H. An Englishwoman, she took 
great pride in * our Princess,' as with a sense 
of proprietorship she always called the future 
Empress of Germany. 

But w^hen friends and kindred had done 
their best, life had to be taken up where she 
had left it. On returning home the loneliness 
seemed greater than ever. She had closed 
her door to every one for a year after her 
husband's death, and when, at the end of that 
time, she opened it, it was a surprise to her 
to find how many of her former assiduous 
visitors had forgotten the way there. She 

18 



274 MADAME MOHL 

would ask, like a petulant child, ^ Why don't 
people come and see me ? I used to have vis- 
itors all day long ; and now, nobody comes ! ' 
The complaint sounded very sad in the 
empty salon that she had done so much to 
make attractive, and where she had been so 
happy to see the crowd coming ^all day 
long.' 

She had worked hard to make her salon 
perfect in its way, and she had succeeded ; 
and now, at the end of the day, nothing 
remained but the pained surprise of being 
forsaken by the clever, agreeable people 
who for a long half century had contin- 
ually climbed her stair, and never found 
it too steep. It was a sad return for the 
labor of a lifetime, for all the trouble she 
had taken to amuse her fellow-creatures. 
Few persons did more in their time than 
Madame Mohl to make life a pleasant, 
cheerful place to those around them ; and 
when we consider how dull most people find 
life, how impatiently they chafe against the 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 275 

dulness, making it worse by clumsy and 
foolish efforts to improve it, one must confess 
that anybody who provides a centre of cheer- 
ful, refined, and healthy recreation for a large 
circle of human beings deserves Avell of man- 
kind. It was ungrateful of the children of 
this world to forsake in her loneliness the 
kindly, spirUiielle old lady who had taken such 
pains to amuse them. 

One day, during her widowhood, Madame 
Mohl said to Madame Cheuvreux, ' I have 
all my life striven to please ; but I cannot 
forgive myself for having lost many oppor- 
tunities, for not devoting more care to it.' 
After a moment's reflection she added : ^ Car 
au fond, il n'y a que cela.' 

She had come to the end of it now, 
and found out what the fond was worth. 

She was extraordinarily faithful in her 
own friendships, and few things gave her 
more pleasure than getting back a friend 
of old times, whom circumstances of one 
kind or another had parted her from. M. 



276 MADAME MOHL 

de Maupas when a very young man had 
been an habitue of Mrs. Clarke's salon, but 
had drifted away from Mary years before 
her marriage. He had then taken office 
under Celui-ci, and become consequently ' un- 
fit for decent company.' But the Empire 
had fallen ; the late Minister of Police was 
now an old man, broken in health, paralyzed, 

and a great sufferer. The Comtesse de , 

an old friend of his and of Madame Mohl's, 
mentioned her name to him one day. He 
brightened up and said, ^She was the most 
spirituelle woman I ever knew,' and added some 

kindly remarks about her. Madame de 

repeated this to Madame Mohl, who was greatly 
pleased, and, fetching a portrait in crayons 
that she had taken of M. de Maupas in the 
days of his youth, she begged Madame de 

to take it to him ; but Madame de 

said, ^ No ; you must take it to him yourself; 
that will make it much more welcome. And 
you know it is one of the works of mercy to 
visit the sick.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 277 

Madame Mohl consented to perform this 
work of mercy. Her visit was announced, 
and all the family were assembled to greet 
her. M. de Maiipas, unable to rise from his 
chair, gave her a welcome that touched her 
deeply. The two old friends sat a long while 
together, working bright incantations on one 
another with that magic little sesame, ' Vous 
souvenez-vous ? ' that opens the enchanted 
palace of the past, and enters its echoing 
chambers, and conjures up its visions so de- 
lightfully. He invited her to dine, and sev- 
eral distinguished persons were asked to meet 
her. This pleasant gathering was one of her 
last gleams of social glory. No pretty young 

debutante at her first ball, Madame de 

says, ever had a greater ovation than this non- 
ogenarian lady at that dinner party. There 
was no question of politics, or anything 
but the pleasure of the meeting after long 
estrangement. 

Madame Mohl had never in her youngest 
days loved solitude ; but it was now unendur- 



278 MADAME MOHL 

able to her. From the time of her husband's 
death, she dreaded being left alone for a 
day. In 1880 she went, as usual, to England, 
and from Wormstall (Berkshire) she writes to 
Madame Scherer : — 

^I am the better already for being here. 
I left Paris because I fell into the most inde- 
scribable state. I did not see a soul from 
Monday to Saturday ! I never saw Paris so 
utterly abandoned. I came here to my niece 
who is my kindest friend, and I am much 
better: but I find I must not be entirely 
alone, which I did not know before. Every- 
body had left town at the beginning of July, 
and the last twenty days were new to me, 
and made me acquainted with myself. 

' I go from this in three weeks to my 
friend Mrs. Simpson, at Bournemouth. If I 
like it, I stay ; if not, I go. But there are 
some nice people there, — a certain Lady 
Shelley, whom I would go some miles to see 
any day. ... I have learned to be very 
humble, for I find I cannot be alone. I must 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 279 

have some one. I don't mean that I want 
people to love me, but I must have some 
society.' 

From another hospitable country house she 
writes a few weeks^later : — 

* I am staying with one of my oldest and 
best friends, Mrs. Bonham Carter, the mother 
of my dear Hilary Carter. ... If I make 
mistakes pray forgive me, for there is a 
woman chattering at my ears such nonsense ! 
I never heard such an impudent ass, since I 
have not had the pleasure of seeing and 
hearing creatures of my own sex oftener than 
I liked ! 

*I am ashamed, my dear, good friend, of 
my silence. The fact is, 1 am grown so stu- 
pid that I often sit a long time doing nothing, 
hardly thinking from extreme low spirits. 
Instead of growing better from the habit of 
loneliness, I am perhaps worse, and the loss 
of my dear husband seems more and more 
a ruin of everything. ... I stayed with my 
niece, Mrs. Vickers, in Berkshire, till the 14th 



280 MADAME MOHL 

of August, when she went to Wilbad. Then 
I came on here to a most charming place, 
eight or ten miles from London. Mrs. Bon- 
ham Carter is the mother of my dear friend, 
who died years ago. She lived with me sev- 
eral years in Paris, studying painting. She 
was the dearest and best friend I ever had, 
and my dear husband loved her as much as I 
did. We were sadly cut up at her death ; it 
must be more than sixteen years ago. How 
time passes ! Her mother and sister, whom 
I am staying with now, are as kind to me as 
she would have been herself. These friends 
are so kind that I feel more sorry to leave 
them than I can tell, which I must do soon : 
first, from mere discretion ; secondly, because 
I want to see some nephews in Leicester- 
shire in September. I think of returning to 
Paris in October, but I am uncertain at what 
date. The fact is, I dread being in Paris 
empty. I stayed there this year till the 
25th of July, and I was nearly two months 
without seeing any one. I thought myself 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 281 

capable of bearing sucli solitude, but / was 
not, and I dare not run the risk again.' 

She returned to Paris at the end of Sep- 
tember, and on the 1st of October she writes 
to Madame Scherer : — 

^Dear Friend, — I this instant found jour 
letter, I came back on Wednesday night, 
the 29th, from London, which I had quitted 
at seven in the morning. 

' I seem as if I had lost my dear husband 
last week, and I never, never shall get over 
it. I went to Pere La Chaise to-day with my 
niece, Ida.' 

The old cemetery, with its silent chapels 
and flowering tombs, has witnessed few more 
touching scenes than that of the aged widow 
sitting, one cold morning, on a high spot, and 
looking on from a distance while they carried 
her husband's coffin from its temporary rest- 
ing-place to the grave she had made ready for 
it, and then stealing quietly away, weeping 



282 MADAME MOHL 

under her black veils, and returning unseen 
to the desolate home. 

But her health was giving way. She suf- 
fered at times very much, and, like most 
people living alone, she was apt to neglect 
herself. Finally, however, she was induced 
to have advice. 

^ I am already the better for the treatment 
of Dr. Gueneau de Mussy,' she writes to Ma- 
dame Cheuvreux. ' We talked about you — 
he and I. He says he used to know you well 
once upon a time, and regrets very much 
that he never sees you now. So, if you like, 
he will be charmed to renew the acquaint- 
ance. No need to say I sha'n't busy myself 
telling him T told you so, in case you did not 
respond. But he is a dehghtful man, full of 
esprit, and so amusing. He is convinced that 

was insupportable, and he has lots of 

other sympathetic convictions.' 

Madame Mohl was not the only patient of 
this most sympathetic physician who consid- 
ered it ' a pleasure to be ill, because it brought 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 283 

one a visit from Dr. de Mussy.' She had a 
great regard for him, and left him a charming 
remembrance of her gratitude for his care and 
kindness. The Queen of Holland had had a 
copy made for M. Mohl of Rembrandt's Legon 
de Vulpius, and after Madame Mohl's death 
this picture was sent by his niece, Madame 
von Schmidt Zabierow, to Dr. de Mussy. His 
name had been written by Madame Mohl on 
the back of it, and he then remembered that, 
many years before, she had said to him one 
day, ^ This will be for you.' 

If Madame Mohl enjoyed Dr. de Mussy's 
visits, even at the cost of some suffering, the 
pleasure seems to have been mutual. Al- 
though he saw her chiefly when she was ill, 
and, consequently, not in the best mood for 
conversation, he found her always original 
and amusing. One of the last times that she 
sent for him, he found her greatly exhausted, 
and with hardly strength left to say, '■ J'ai fait 
des betises ! ' Her voice was scarcely audible. 
He contrived to rouse her a little and rally 



284 MADAME MOHL 

her strength, and then she explained to him 
what the hetise was : — 

' I had a frantic desire to hear some Italian 
music; so I went down into the street, and 
waited for the omnibus that would take me 
to the theatre. I got in, and arrived there ; 
but there was not a single place to be had 
except up among the gods. This did not, 
however, prevent me enjoying the music de- 
liciously. On leaving the theatre, I had great 
difficulty in getting the omnibus to take me 
home. I did get it at last ; but I am done up ! ' 

What energy of mind and body in a woman 
of ninety ! Dr. de Mussy says that up to the 
last she had the most incredible agility, and 
would run up her high stairs quaire a quafre ; 
but as the sum of her strength was not equal 
to this agility, when she had indulged in some 
^petite extravagance,^ as she used to say, she 
was knocked up. 

After one of these little bouts of extrava- 
gance that rendered Dr. de Mussy's care 
again necessary, Madame Mohl went to Stors 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 285 

to recruit, and spent a month there with 
great enjoyment. 

She had met her old admirer, M. Thiers, at 
Stors during the previous summer. It was 
their last meeting on this side of the grave. 
Perhaps both had some vague presentiment 
of this ; at any rate, they talked very confi- 
dentially together about old times, and M. 
Thiers, sitting in a summer-house, on a lovely 
June afternoon, made some sentimental dec- 
laration about having loved her in his youth, 
when, as a ^ 'petit eiudiant^ the concierge com- 
plained of his long visits. He told Madame 
Mohl he had never dared tell her of his love, 
because he had nothinor else to offer her. 
Whether the story was true or not, Madame 
Mohl believed it, and was greatly touched 
by it. M. Thiers' oldest and most intimate 
friend declares the statesman was hoaxing 
the old lady, an accusation that does not 
sound incredible, and one which may without 
much remorse be thrown in with others that 
lie on the memory of the Liberator of the 



286 MADAME MOHL 

Territory. Anyhow, the avowal revived Ma- 
dame Mohl's old friendship for him, and she 
felt his death as a personal sorrow. The 
following letter was written to Madame 
Cheuvreux on the day of his funeral, which 
occurred almost immediately after her long 
visit to Stors : — 

* Dear Friend, — You are very grudging of 
your ink and paper, I must say, never to tell 
me a word about your own little concerns ; as 
if, after being a month at home in your house, 
and being treated, not only with all possible 
distinction, but with all possible tenderness, I 
had no interest in them ! Are you so utterly 
devoid of principle as to clean forget me ? 
Don't the affairs of Stors concern me ? It is 
downright mean to have let me feel that I 
was one of the family (which I adopted with 
all my heart), and then to leave me in total 
ignorance of everything \ above all, after my 
telling you all about my marriage, to amuse 
you ! 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 287 

' But I have been so full of poor Thiers 
(and you, too, no doubt) that I have not 
thought as much of your bad behavior as I 
should have done, if this and the newspapers 
had not filled my mind. Luckily, I have in 
the house here a nice old gentleman, who 
never contradicts me, M. Trelat, formerly 
Director of the Saltpetriere for more than 
forty years, I think. He is so old that he can 
hardly see me, and can only get up to my 
apartment with a great effort; but the eyes of 
his mind are still full of life and intelligence. 
He is very deaf, and, like the commandant, 
he won't use a trumpet, which I am sorry for, 
because even my clear, high voice does not 
always reach him, and this prevents my 
talking to him as much as I should like. If 
it were not for this, we should suit each other 
like a pair of gloves. He has been rather 
extreme in politics, they say, but he is a man 
of such entire loyalty ! . . . 

'This is the day of the funeral, and it 
pours torrents, without a moment's respite. 



288 MADAME MOHL 

I am vexed to the last degree by this rain, 
which will greatly interfere with the pro- 
gramme. The Government and the news- 
papers are disgusting. Good-by, dear mechante. 
If you don't write I'll not love you any the 
less ; but I will be very angry with you.' 

^Dear, very dear friend,' she writes to 
Madame Cheuvreux, in a moment of great 
depression, '^it is difficult for a letter to do 
any one more good than yours has done me •, 
above all, as a proof of your old, and large, 
and tender, and loyal friendship. Oh, how 
good it is to have such a friendship when 
one is in sorrow like mine ! ' 

She rebounded now and then, and never 
nursed her grief morbidly; but her sorrow 
remained inconsolable to the last. 

Her faculties had continued unimpaired up 
to this period, but the decay of memory, which 
set in soon after M. Mohl's death, went on 
rapidly to almost total loss. She forgot events 
even from one day to another completely. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 289 

She would go down of a morning to Madame 
d'Abbadie, who lived on a floor below her, 
and exclaim in sudden agitation: — 

^ My dear, I want you to give me the ad- 
dress of your man of business. I want him 
to invest my money for me. I don't know 
what to do with it and I 'm afraid it will all 
be lost.' 

She would take down the name, the ad- 
dress, and go away relieved in mind, and 
return next day, again asking for it in the 
same agitation. She had never adopted the 
English habit of keeping her money at a 
banker's and drawing checks; but used to 
stow it away in boxes and drawers, sometimes 
to the great annoyance of friends at whose 
houses she visited. Towards the end of her 
life this habit became a mania, and she used 
to hide away large sums of money behind 
pictures, under the sofa-cushions, and in other 
unlikely places: sometimes twenty, thirty, 
forty thousand francs were spread about 
the drawing-room in this fashion. Then she 

19 



290 MADAME MOHL 

would forget where she had hid the money, 
and would fancy it had been stolen, and spend 
the day in a state of despair, looking for it, 
afraid to say anything to her servants, but 
confiding her trouble to any friend who came 
in, and who would help in the search. When 
the money was all found, she was like a child 
that had got back its lost penny. 

Mr. John Field (of Philadelphia) found her 
one day sitting with quite a large sum of 
money lying about the table beside her; he 
was rather startled next morning to get a 
note asking if he could tell her what she 
had done with it. We can readily believe 
that Mr. Field ^ felt a little uncomfortable ' 
till the old lady discovered where she had 
hid it away. 

Her nephew Ottmar, who came to Paris 
every year, was greatly pained to witness the 
gradual decline of her bright faculties; but 
it was wonderful, he says, to see how her 
affections still preserved their vitality. The 
moment her dear Madame d'Abbadie came in 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 291 

she was a different person; her espit would 
flash up, she would begm to talk with the old 
vivacity, and her clear laugh would ring out. 
But as soon as the stimulant of her friend's 
presence was withdrawn, she drooped, and fell 
back into her habitual listless, sleepy state. 

To the very end, throughout this sad 
mental decay, which invaded the morale, 
increasing to mania a natural tendency to 
stinginess, Madame Mold's heart retained its 
native warmth. She never grew to love her 
money better than her friends. Her affection 
for Mrs. Wynne Finch had grown much 
deeper and tenderer since that courageous 
friend had warned her that M. Mohl was 
dying. Madame Mohl clung to her like a 
child ever after, and opened her heart to her 
more fully, perhaps, than to any one else. 
She was always entreating Mrs. Wynne 
Finch to come and dine with her. 

* My dear,' she would say, ' I never have 
any dinner to speak of for myself ; but don't 
you be afraid on that account. There is a 



292 MADAME MOHL 

capital pastrycook's opposite, and I will send 
across for any dishes you like, and they will 
be here piping hot in five minutes. So come 
whenever you can, and be sure you can never 
come amiss.' And fabulously stingy as she 
had grown towards herself, she would gladly 
have paid many times a week for these 
piping hot dishes for her friend. 

Sometimes she forgot that M. Mohl was 
dead, and would speak as if he were coming 
home to dinner. 

It was very curious to observe how the 
chief characteristic of her mind, that keen in- 
tellectual curiosity, which Dr. Johnson con- 
sidered the surest sign of a vigorous intellect, 
survived this wreck of memory. One day 
she received a visit from a lady who had been 
away in Australia for many years. Madame 
Mohl had not the faintest recollection of who 
she was, or anything about her. ' My dear,' 
she said, ' I dare say I liked you very much, 
but I have quite forgotten you. Never mind. 
Tell me who you are.' The visitor wholly 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 293 

failed to identify herself : but when she spoke 
of Australia the old lady was full of curiosity 
to hear all about it, and opened a fire of lead- 
ing questions : * And they speak English ? 
How extraordinary ! And what sort of clothes 
do they wear ? Do they go naked, like sav- 
ages ? ' — and so on ; inquiring about the re- 
sources of the colony, and the people and 
their prospects, as she might have done for- 
merly on hearing of the discovery of a new 
island. Once she grasped the subject pre- 
sented to her, she could talk about it as 
clearly and sensibly as ever. 

In the summer of the same year, Mr. and 
Mrs. Wheelwright (of Boston) came to see her. 
Mrs. Wheelwright's notes made at the time 
show us Madame Mohl as she was in her 
ninety -first year : ^ A curious little figure 
came forward to greet us, — a very slight 
woman, about the middle height. Her gray 
hair was in a most dishevelled condition ; a 
mass of tangled curls projected over her fore- 
head, and was constantly getting into her eyes, 



294 MADAME MOHL 

and she was constantly poking it out. Her 
black silk gown, much the worse for the wear, 
was made open in the neck. A lace ruffle 
adorned the edge of her bodice, which had a 
trick of getting unhooked every minute, and 
at which she was perpetually fumbling with 
her very active fingers. Her eyes were fine, 
and still bright. In spite of some eccentri- 
cities, such as curling and uncurling herself 
in a corner of the sofa, her manners were very 
agreeable.' 

In the spring of 1881, two years before her 
death, Mr. Grant Duff saw her in Paris. She 
received him with great cordiality, and talked 
a long time very pleasantly and intelligently. 
To his surprise, when he rose to go, she said, 
' My dear sir, I have been delighted to see 
you, but I have not the least idea who you 
are.' '' My name,' he replied ^ is Grant Dulff.' 
' Oh ! I used to know you well, twenty years 
ago ; but I have never seen you since.' ' It 
was not that she had lost her memory,' ob- 
serves Mr. Grant Duff, 'but as one of her 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 295 

friends said, she had holes in it, and some of 
them were very large. I had fallen through 
one of these.' 

An extract from Mr. Wheelwright's diary 
completes a pictm^e that will be familiar to 
the habitues of the Rue du Bac. 

* Madame Mohl's sofa was in the middle of 
the room, at right angles to the fire-place, 
and with its back to the windows. Beside it 
was a little round table, strewn with books, 
an ink-stand, and a tumbler-like vase of agate 
in which were a number of quill pens, points 
upwards, thickly crusted with ink. The vase 
had been given her by a friend in England. 
The whole aspect of the room was very 
charming to me ; everything old and old-fash- 
ioned ; temfs de V Empire. . . . The room was 
crowded with sofas of all sizes and forms. 
She called our attention to them, and asked 
if we had ever before seen so many sofas in 
one room.' 

She talked to her visitors very brightly of 
long ago, and was as accurate as possible 



296 MADAME MOHL 

concerning things that had happened fifty, 
sixty, seventy years past ; but events of a 
nearer date were all confused. When Mrs. 
Wheelwright spoke of her memoir of Ma- 
dame Recamier, she could remember nothing 
about it. ' Did I write a book about her, my 
dear? I don't recollect.' 

Of Madame Recamier herself she had the 
most vivid recollection, and of Chateaubriand, 
too ; she said he was ' the most agreeable of 
men.' To Mrs. Wheelwright's remark, 'But 
he was so vain and selfish ? ' she replied, ' But 
selfish people are not necessarily disagreeable, 
my dear, and their vanity makes them anxious 
to ingratiate themselves.' Madame Recamier, 
she said, ' did not seem old, she carried herself 
so well ; and she had a great deal of sense, — 
much more than people gave her credit for. 
She was well read and, kept up in the literature 
of the day. I have never known anybody so 
delightful in a tate-a-tete. I loved to get her 
alone, but it was not easy, she was always 
so surrounded.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 297 

She spoke very affectionately of Merim^e. 
Mr. Wheelwright mentioned his Letters, and 
asked if she knew Merimee's mysterious cor- 
respondent ; Madame Mohl replied, ^ Yes, I 
know Mademoiselle D , she was undoubt- 
edly the Inconnue. Nobody knew it till the let- 
ters were published, then everybody found it 

out. Mademoiselle D did not take pains 

enough to keep the secret. Why did she pub- 
lish them ? She did it as one takes a walk 
when one is in distress, not for the pleasure of 
the walk, but because one must do something ; 
she 'published the letters being in great dis- 
tress of mind after Merimee's death. Why 
did they not marry ? He did not care to 
marry ; he was comfortable enough as a 
bachelor, but not rich enough to support a 
wife. Besides, probably, he liked his lib- 
erty. Their intercourse was kept secret 
that evil tongues might have nothing to talk 
about.' 

Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright went again to 
see her in the evening, and found her alone, 



298 MADAME MOHL 

looking very desolate over her solitary cup 
of tea. 

' The large windows of her salon were open, 
looking over green gardens full of tall trees ; 
in the distance the gilt dome of the Invalides. 
The setting sun threw a golden glow into the 
room. Madame Mohl was very low-spirited, 
and told us over and over again the sad stories 
of her sister's and her husband's deaths. Her 
sister's portrait was hanging in the salon ; a 
charming face, and well painted. She showed 
us a lead-pencil drawing of M. Mohl — a fine, 
thoughtfid head, German in type. She look 
us to the window, and pointed out the various 
gardens. " That large one," she said, " be- 
longs to a convent.^ Its occupants are an 

1 The foreign missionaries. Their labors are not confined 
to Africa, but extend all over the world. The fathers are 
supported, not only by the peasantry, but by Catholics of all 
classes in France. 

This expanse of garden had been a source of intense pleas- 
ure to Madame Mohl during the forty odd years she had been 
looking out over it. ' I rejoice,' she writes to Madame Scherer, 
' in the sight of the green blush which seems to rise as by 
magic all over the gardens. It is not to be expressed, the 
delight it is to me, — that garden. It softens my heart 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 299 

order of missionaries to North Africa, and 
are supported by all the peasants of France." 
She told us she had had a quarrel with her 
cook ; " I have had her for ten years, and I 
fancied she was attached to me ; but, my 
dear, it was a delusion. She was not a bit 
attached to me ; and she has been putting 
up the other maid to ask for higher wages, 
so I shall have to part with them both. When 
I went to England, in former years, I wanted 
no maid. Now, I don't know what to do, or 
where to go. I have never been in Paris be- 
fore so late." Her books were her only 
resource now, she said. When we came in 
she had been reading the Nineteenth Century, 
dipping into it as she sipped her tea. The 
publishers always sent it to her, she told 
us. Justin McCarthy's '•^ History of Our Own 

towards the old institution of monasteries.' Her heart was 
not hard towards the institution, even without the garden. 
She admired the Dominicans to enthusiasm, and had a good 
word for the Jesuits, whose system of education she thought 
highly of. The Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul© she held in 
loving veneration, and gave her alms to the poor through 
them. 



300 MADAME MOHL 

Times " was on the table beside it : "A most 
delightful book, mj dear. I read it all the 
evening, and I never go to bed before mid- 
night." I asked her about old times, and 
how the society of her youth compared with 
that of the present day. She said there was 
no societ}^ now : " Louis Philippe was the best 
king France ever had. The French did not 
know when they were well off. In those 
days society was delightful. Six to a dozen 
people used to go to the house of one among 
them every night, or several times a week. 
They took pains to be agreeable; to have 
some story to tell, some interesting news, etc. 
Each one did his part; it w^as delightful. 
But all that is over now. The late dinners 
and love of display have killed society." I 
mentioned to her that I had just met an old 
acquaintiince of hers, Mr. F. B., of Boston, 
and that he was speaking of the charms of 
her salon. " Mr. F. B. ? " she said. " I don't 
remember him ; but I knew so many pleasant 
Americans. Why does he not come and see 



HER SALOIV AND HER FRIENDS 301 

me ? I can't think why people forget me as 
they do." She seemed to take Mr. F. B.'s 
forgetfulness so much to heart that I hastened 
to assure her he was only passing through 
Paris.' 

This falling off of visitors was her constant 
complaint. She kept bewailing it to every- 
body : ' I used to have such crowds of pleas- 
ant people coming to see me ! Nobody 
comes now. Why, I wonder ? ' 

But if the ' crowds of pleasant people ' who 
had been assiduous at the Rue du Bac when it 
was a centre of amusement ceased to frequent 
the now lonely salon, this way of the world 
was not imitated by the few real friends who 
were sincerely attached to Madame Mohl. 
Their faithful devotion made a fine contrast to 
the desertion by the pleasure-seeking crowd. 
Among these faithful ones were Madame ^ 
and Mademoiselle Tourguenieff, whose long- 
proved affection drew closer to her in her 

^ Widow and daughter of the political economist, not the 
novelist. 



302 MADAME MOHL 

hour of need; M. and Madame d'Abbadie, 
who were her close neighbors ; Mignet, in 
spite of her steep stairs, came often to her. 
But no one was more devotedly kind than M. 
Barthelemy St.-Hilaire, the friend of a life- 
time. After M. Mohl's death, M. St.-Hilaire 
abandoned Aristotle, gave up his beloved 
studies, his whole time for six months, to per- 
form the onerous duties of executor to his 
friend. Madame Mohl grew so used to hav- 
ing him continually at her beck and call, 
alwaj^s at hand to advise, to cheer her, to man- 
age her business, that when his duties as Min- 
ister for Foreign Affairs forcibly put an end 
to this pleasant state of things the poor old 
soul was indignant, and resented it as a cruel 
WTong and a faithless desertion. When M. 
St.-Hilaire's name was mentioned, she would 
say petulantly, "^ I never see him. He never 
cared for me ; it was only for M. Mohl that 
he cared. I know that now.' 

But the moment the deserter was set free 
from the bondage of state afiairs he went at 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 303 

once to the Rue clu Bac. Madame Mobl gave 
a scream of delight when she beheld him, and 
fell upon his neck, in her impulsive childlike 
way. * So you have come back ! Why did 
you give me up? What did I do to vex 
you?' 

M. St.-Hilaire was equally touched by her 
reproaches and by her joyful welcome. He 
tried to make her understand that he had not 
been at fault, and that he had now come to 
resume the old and pleasant intercourse which 
had been inevitably interrupted by public 
duties. She was pacified, but nailed him at 
once by a promise to dine with her every Fri- 
day, so long as he did not take to being state 
minister again. 

M. St.-Hilaire kept this weekly engagement 
to the last. He declares that in doing; so he 
had no merit of self-sacrifice : that Madame 
Mohl's conversation was as interesting, as 
clever, as it had been in younger days. The 
loss of her memory and her delusion about 
her money affairs were very distressing; but 



304 MADAME MOHL 

with this exception, she was the same bright, 
amusing hostess as ever. Within the last 
year of her Hfe she became possessed by the 
idea that she had lost everything; that she 
would not be able to meet the next quarter's 
rent, and should be obliged to leave her 
present abode. M. St.-Hilaire, who knew 
how utterly devoid of foundation this fear 
was, would advise her to go to her man of 
business, assuring her that he would find the 
necessary money. When her mind was set 
at rest on this score, she would chat away as 
pleasantly as possible on every subject that 
was started. 

She remained physically" as active as a 
young girl, and would run up and down 
stairs with her burden of ninety years, as if 
she had been nineteen. A few months before 
her death, Mrs. Milner Gibson called to in- 
quire for her; being herself ailing at the time, 
she could not climb the steep stairs, but sent 
up her card. Madame Mohl, hearing that her 
old friend was waiting in the carriage for an 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 306 

answer, ran down as she was, and jumped in 
beside her, and began to talk about M. Mohl 
and to weep over him, as if she had lost him 
only a month before. 

The friends who surrounded her in her 
widowhood relate how bitterly she continued 
to mourn for her husband to the last. They 
used to find her of an evening sitting by the 
fire, with the tongs in her hand, fidgeting 
with the logs, building and unbuilding them, 
and looking the picture of loneliness and des- 
olation. She would at once begin to talk of 
* Mr. Mohl,' and pour out her recollections of 
all that he had been to her ; telling over and 
over the same tale of his entire devotion to 
her, his cleverness in managing their property, 
his fidelity to old friends, his goodness, his 
wonderful learning, etc. And as she rambled 
on, the big tears would trickle down her 
wrinkled face, and the little gra.y curls would 
quiver with the emotion that shook her. 

Up to within a short time of her death, she 
was often heard to say that she had never 

20 



306 MADAME MOHL 

known an hour's ennui in her Hfe ; poignant 
grief she had experienced more than once, but 
emud never. Such an assertion sounds ahuost 
incredible from any human being, no matter 
how exceptionally bright their circumstances 
and opportunities may have been; but, dis- 
counting it, as one must do all Madame Mohl's 
sweeping assertions, it w^as perhaps as true 
of her as it could be of any one. She had a 
very happy temperament : she was content to 
take the world as she found it, and she found 
it a very pleasant place, full of gens d'esprit; 
she was content with herself, her position, 
her fortune, all the share in life that was al- 
lotted to her. There was a spirit of unworld- 
liness, — though it may sound paradoxical, — 
negative unworldliness, that preserved her 
from the irritation and restlessness that posi- 
tive worldliness breeds. She did not care a 
dry straw for a multitude of things, the want 
of, or the longing for which, keeps worldly- 
minded persons in a state of chronic disquiet 
and discontent. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 307 

Her standard was low enough to be reached 
without strain or discomfort. It makes all 
the difference, having a convenient standard. 
Pleasing one's self and other people without 
reference to a high ideal that involves sac- 
rifice, makes the way very easy and smooth. 
Madame Mohl said that she had always 
striven to please, feeling that ^ au fond il n'y 
a que cela.' She had succeeded, and had 
reaped a rich crop from the seed carefully 
sown through, say, three quarters of a cen- 
tury. She had been widely, extraordinarily 
popular, and ^pleased' more people than 
most of her generation ; but when the power 
of pleasing no longer existed, there was noth- 
ing to replace it, nothing to fall back on, and 
the life that had been so brilliant and full of 
interesting, pleasant excitement was setting 
in solitude, weariness, and gloom. Ennui, 
that she had kept at bay throughout, over- 
took her at the close, when she had lost the 
power of coping with it. 

Yet she knew that the end was not far off, 



308 MADAME MOHL 

and she saw the night closing in upon her 
without fear, apparently, if without cousola- 
tion. She said more than once to a friend 
whose courage had stood her in good stead 
at another crisis only less momentous, ' I feel 
greatly humbled before God when I look back 
on my life, and see how much better I might 
have been, and how much more I might 
have done.' And her friend's assurance that 
this sense of being an unprofitable servant, 
and sorrow for having done so little, was 
the best atonement she could make, used to 
console her, and she would renew the self- 
accusation to hear the words of encourage- 
ment repeated. 

M. St.-Hilaire continued faithful to his 
weekly engagement. On Friday, the 11th of 
May, he dined with Madame Mohl en tete- 
a-tete for the last time. 

' Never,' he said to me, * did I see her more 
agreeable ; her conversation was as original, 
as piquante, as entertaining, as I ever remem- 
bered it.' 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 309 

She had begun, as usual, by telling him of 
her utter destitution, and her terror of being 
short of money for the quarter's rent; but 
when, as usual, he had set her mind at rest 
on this point, she was quite content, like a 
child, and entered into conversation on a 
variety of subjects, talking of old times and 
memories in common ; and on all of these 
thino-s she was as clear as a bell. After 
dinner she seemed tired, and lay down on 
the sofa. When the tray was brought in, 
she asked M. St.-Hilaire to make the tea. 

•^I thought this a bad sign,' her old friend 
says, reverting with pathetic humor to this 
incident of their last evening together. It 
was the first time, in all their long years 
of intimacy, that he had ever known her al- 
low any one to interfere in the tea-making. 
He said it was too great a responsibility ; 
that he would pour in the water, but that 
he could not undertake to put in the tea. 
She laughed, and repeated a remark he had 
often heard before ; that his not drinking tea 



310 MADAME MOHL 

was the only flaw she had ever discovered in 
his character. 

He went away before midnight, leaving 
her in very good spirits. 

The next day she had a kind of fit. The 
servant ran down for Madame d'Abbadie, who 
came at once. Mademoiselle Tourguenieff 
was sent for later. These two faithful friends 
watched by her to the last. 

It was wonderful to see how, with the 
shades of death closing round her, her espit 
retained its quickness. The doctor had or- 
dered her to be rubbed with some calming 
lotion, and Madame d'Abbadie was doing this 
with the utmost gentleness ; but the old lady 
cried out, and told the doctor she had been 
shaken to pieces. On her friend's affection- 
ately protesting that she had made her hand 
so light that it could not have hurt an infant, 
Madame Mohl retorted, with a faint flash of 
the old spirit, * Oh, yes, so you think; but 
then, other people's skin is so tough ! ' (la 
peau d'autrui est si dure !) 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 311 

Her favorite, the big Persian cat, jumped up 
on the bed. She stroked it, and said, * He is 
so disiingue. His wife is not the least distingue, 
but he does not see it ; he is like many other 
husbands in that.' 

Madame d'Abbadie prayed beside her, and 
the dying woman joined with fervor and entire 
consciousness in all she said. Before sundown 
she passed away. It was the 15th of May, 
1883. They laid her to rest between Fauriel 
and Julius Mohl. 

The pleasant life was ended. The door of 
the salon was definitely closed. Before turn- 
ing away from it, one is tempted to linger a 
moment on the threshold, and inquire into the 
curious riddle of Madame Mohl's character, 
and try to find some key to the sort of psy- 
chological puzzle that it suggests. 

We must, in the first place, remember that 
she was, to all intents and purposes, a child of 
the eighteenth century. Mrs. Clarke had been 
still more completely so, educated by a mother 



312 MADAME MOHL 

who had looked up to Hume as an oracle of 
truth, — Hume, the unbeliever, who, for all 
his unbelief, left in his will that masses should 
be celebrated for the repose of his soul, in 
order that if, after all, it should turn out that 
Catholicism was true, he might have the ben- 
efit of the mediation of that Church that he 
had persistently maligned and attacked. Mrs. 
Clarke had, no doubt, been brought up, like 
all Christians of the upper and middle classes 
of her generation, on that manual of the day, 
Blair's Sermons, of which Mr. Leslie Stephen 
says, * ^ They represent the last stage of theo- 
logical decay ; ' and of which Mr. Lilly writes, 
* The pages are ftdl of solemn trifling, prosings 
about adversity and prosperity, eulogies upon 
that most excellent of virtues, moderation, 
and proofs that,ion the whole, religion is pro- 
ductive of pleasure.' 

To make life ' productive of pleasure, ' — 
this was what theology had fallen to in 
England. Decency of behavior, a sort of 

1 History of Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 313 

sceptical patronage of virtue as contributing 
to personal enjoyment, — respectability, in a 
word, — this was the law which had replaced 
the sublime Christian ideal of self-sacrifice. 
It was the practical negation of Christianity 
in creed and in work. 

' The general aim of its accredited teachers ' 
(the teachers of Christianity in the eighteenth 
century), says Mr. Lilly, ^ seems to have been 
to explain away its mysteries, to extenuate its 
supernatural character, to reduce it to a code 
of ethics little differing from the doctrines 
of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. Religious 
dogmas were almost openly admitted to be 
nonsense. Religious emotion was openly stig- 
matized as enthusiasm.' 

In France, this negation of Christianity 
was more absolute and openly defiant. The 
spirit of the age was more deliberately set 
against the supernatural than it had been at 
any epoch since the ages of paganism. The 
Revolution had already, while in its latent 
condition, sapped the national faith, and its 



314 • MADAME MOHL 

completed triumph had been to leave a gene- 
ration soddened by a materialism spiced with 
an acrid infidel philosophy. Those who were 
saved from the deluge of infidelity came forth 
with a purified faith, whose flame shone 
steadily in the land, and has gone on shining 
ever since with serene and unfaltering radi- 
ance. But these were the few. The prevail- 
ing tone of society was that of the philosophy 
which had substituted the Etre Bupreme for 
the Creator and Redeemer of mankind. 
Symptoms of a revival of Christian life were 
beginning to be visible ; but, though the cur- 
rent had set in that direction, it still flowed 
very feebly when Mary Clarke was making 
her own education in the ateliers and salons 
of Paris. Many of these belonged virtually 
to the eighteenth century, an age which, Mr. 
Stuart Mill says,^ ' seemed smitten with inca- 
pacity for producing deep and strong feeling, 
— such at least, as could ally itself to medi- 
tative habits.' 

^ Discussions and Dissertations. 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 315 

In France, this incapacity for meditative 
habits would, perhaps, account in some meas- 
ure for the extraordinary capacity for talk 
which the same age developed. Talking had 
become, as we have seen, the business of life 
to a whole class of intelligent persons ; and it 
is difficult to combine this passion for inces- 
sant talk with the meditative silence which 
generates deep thought and strong feeling. 

The Due de Broglie, in estimating Madame 
Mohl's character, says that her mind had not, 
he believes, formed any definite ideas on any 
subject. Such an absence of fixity of opinion 
suggests a sort of mental vacuum that it is 
hard to reconcile with the intellectual activity 
so remarkable in her ; but at the same time 
it seems to furnish a key to some of the con- 
tradictions she presented. Her aim through 
life, she herself declared, had been to please ; 
and with this very low and accessible standard, 
she managed to be very happy, and to escape 
an hour's emiid almost to the very close. It 
was only towards the end, when the dawn 



316 MADAME MOHL 

ought to have been whitening, that this stan- 
dard failed her and vanished, and left her in 
the dark. 

Not long ago, on a public occasion, M. 
Renan, who was an JiaUttie of Madame Mohl's 
salon, informed his countrymen, as the result 
of a life's experience, that the highest wisdom 
and best practical religion was la honne Jiumeur. 
Madame Mohl, who had not had, like the 
brilliant Academician, early training in a 
school that offers stronger helps and a more 
sublime creed, held something of the same 
doctrine. She carried la honne Jiumeur into all 
the relations of life, and clung to it to the 
last. We have seen how, when the hand of 
death was stiffening her limbs, she joked 
about her favorite cat. 

But, along with this newest discovery in 
practical religion, and panacea for the ills of 
life, she possessed a certain natural human 
piety and truthfulness, which prompted her 
to the faithful fulfilment of her duties accord- 
ing to her lights. She was a good daughter, 



HER SALON AND HER FRIENDS 317 

a good wife, a good friend, and an entirely 
respectable member of society. She might, 
with a nobler ideal — that ideal which alone 
can carry us to the end without disenchant- 
ment — have been something more. But to 
her the choice was scarcely given. She took 
the weights and measures that her period and 
its surroundings had provided for her, and 
she did the best she could with them. Tak- 
ing her all in all, with her gifts, her failings, 
and her charm, we shall not, probably, look 
upon her like again. 



Uniyersity Press: John XVilsoa & Son, Cambridge. 



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